The Night Of The Beast
by Gunney
Summary: At the completion of a case Jim and Arte get caught in a snow storm, and encounter a strange creature.
1. Chapter 1

The heavy wet snow that had started falling early that morning had created beautiful mounded sculptures out of the trees, and left a field of diamonds over the hillside that dazzled the eye as the morning sun rose. The long lines of brilliant sunlight slashing across the mountainside had greeted James West, who left the rail car for a brief trip into the nearby mining town. The crisp air, the clear blue skies and the warmth of the sun reflecting off the unbroken sheet of white; never before had a winter's day in the mountains been so genial.

West knew it wouldn't last and was prepared for anything, but his trip was going to be short. The siding that The Wanderer sat on wasn't more than three miles away from the town and he was only planning to be there for the few hours it would take to locate his partner and the prisoners, collect them, and return to the warmth of the varnish car.

The light fluffy snow that had put two feet down on the mountainside that morning was just a flurry compared to the gale headed their way. Unless they wanted to be stuck in the mining town for another week they had to leave right away.

Neither secret service man was anxious to spend any more time in Holloway when the warmth of San Francisco, Texas or even New Orléans, could soon be awaiting them.

Arte was apparently very anxious, Jim realized, when he spotted his partner, and their four prisoners, making their way toward him, having already left the town. While Arte could have been on horseback he had apparently chosen to walk, guiding his prisoners, who were also walking, ahead of him through the snow.

"I thought you were going to hire some horses!" Jim called to the man wearing a sheepskin coat and gloves, a long black scarf, brown trousers and knee-length boots. Arte had his rifle casually cradled in one arm, his other hand behind him, leading his mount.

"Fancy meeting you here, James!" He responded shouting across the distance that separated them.

Each of the four prisoners were so varied in height, weight and nationality, that they alone, even in normal clothes, looked like a circus, even outfitted for the cold weather.

At the approach of the other secret service agent the four criminals slowed their pace, thinking that this would provide them a chance to rest, but Arte's voice piped up behind them. "Keep it moving men, I don't see a train, do you?"

Groaning, each man trudged forward, widening the gap in their ragged line, revealing the chain that linked each of them together. The chain was attached to manacles that each man wore around his wrists.

Jim stepped down from the saddle and joined his partner, training his own rifle on the men, as they walked.

"It's a fine morning, Arte, but why walk?"

"I didn't want to provide any more means of escape for these men, than I had to. And the walk will wear them down, hopefully, take some of the fight out of them."

West took a closer look at his partner, noticing the discoloration under his left eye and the stiff way he was walking. The depth of the snow, and the cold, had made his stride seem unnatural, but closer now to the older man, Jim could tell it had more to do with his injuries.

"They cause you trouble last night?" He asked.

Arte shrugged, then slowed a step and handed the reins of his mare to Jim, switching the rifle from his left arm to his now free right. His left he kept crooked and pressed against his chest. "Nothing too serious. You know how I abhor violence."

"So then it was a non-violent protest that gave you that bruise?"

Arte smirked. He'd been undercover in the mountain town for a little over three months, and had known going into the job that maintaining a pasted on mustache and beard for that long would be beastly. Instead he had stopped shaving, and in a little under a week the stubble had done its job, making him look like he belonged in the town.

"Last night I was hoping to get rid of this beard. Holloway still has no jail, so we had them locked up in the liquor cabinet of the store. The sheriff said he could handle watching them for an hour while I shaved." Arte shook his head.

Jim chuckled a little. "How'd the sheriff make out?"

"Knocked over the head with a fire poker. Ten stitches from that doctor/dentist/barber quack in town." Arte gestured his free hand toward the bruise on his face. "I've got this and sore ribs. That one..." Arte jabbed his finger at the tallest, broadest and meanest looking of the four. "I had to hit twice. Of course, given that I had a pair of barbering shears in my hands at the time of the incident, I suppose I should be grateful no one tried to slit my throat."

It also seemed that Arte had given up on his hope for shaving, as the man still bore the full beard and mustache, if nicely trimmed.

They were quiet for a minute, both men studying the prisoners laboring to break trail through the snow ahead of them. They were able to follow the path Jim's horse had taken, but the snow was deep and growing heavier by the minute as the sun warmed it.

"How did the refitting go?" Arte asked.

"I think you'll like the end result, Arte." Jim said, pleased with himself.

For a long time he and Gordon had been discussing the need for well made, as-escape-proof-as-possible, holding cells in the baggage car. While they had no interest in weighing down the train anymore than they had to; its light load part of what made it so effective a conveyance. They had more times than not found the lack of a holding cell incredibly inconvenient.

Locking prisoners in closets, or their own berths, wasn't as effective as it could be.

"It took you long enough, I had better like it." Arte groused. They had solved the case and made their arrests four days before, but Jim insisted on taking the train to a bigger town on the other side of the mountain to refit the baggage car and install the cells, all according to a plan that he hadn't shown Arte. Jim claimed that he had approved the plan through Orrin, their engineer and erstwhile train master, so Arte agreed to stay in the town looking after the prisoners and closing up shop until Jim returned.

Jim's cable that morning couldn't have come soon enough.

"How is ol' Saguache, Colorado doing anyway?" Arte asked. He and his partner had spent some time in the town a while back investigating a serial killing.

"Sheriff Bowdeen sends his regards and is looking forward to housing our friends there overnight in his jail."

"Marvelous."

"We've been offered adjoining rooms in the Mears' Town hotel." Jim continued and Arte chuckled remembering the handful of box like buildings that made up what they called Mears' Town. "And old man Mears himself is rumored to make an appearance." Jim concluded, both men reacting with exaggerated aplomb to the revelation.

"How far is this supposed train anyway?" One of the prisoner's interrupted. No more than four feet tall, the speaker was sagging against another of the prisoners, clearly worn out.

"It could be in Timbuktu and it still wouldn't matter. Keep walking." Arte responded, waiting until the big man, who was in the lead, started the caravan on its way again.

"How far away _is _the train, Jim?"

"Three miles..."

Arte groaned. "You're right, I shouldn't have walked."

By the time they reached the chuffing train on the siding and lowered the ramp of the equine car the sun had risen well into the sky, the hour close to ten in the morning. Both men guided the prisoners up the ramp and into the much warmer car, securing each in his own cell.

The cells had been placed one in each corner of the car. This had required moving the horses' stalls to the center of the room, where they had been stabilized with added timbers. As each cell occupied a corner, the 90 degree space had been filled with a triangular piece of wood fastened to the walls of the car, three feet off the floor, and covered in a triangular cushion that provided the only seating for the prisoners.

"Where did you put the stove?" Arte asked, pointing at the place in the center of the car where the pot belly had once been.

"They won't need it." Jim said, smirking at his partner before he pointed to four vents on the floor of the car directly under the prisoner's cells. "We fitted extra pipes under the floor boards that feed the steam through filters, soaking up the moisture and expel hot air."

A surprised smile crept over Arte's face, his eyes twinkling as he bent carefully to look at the vents. He could still see a little saw dust around each of them, but they had otherwise been expertly fitted. Now, not only could they heat the baggage car less expensively, but with greater effectiveness too, if the way the car felt was any indication.

"I...am impressed, Jim." Arte said finally, to which his partner proudly grinned.

"Did you do the same to the varnish car?"

"Not yet...there wasn't time. With more rooms and a bigger space I'll have to design a different piping diagram. But Orrin and I already have an idea for that."

Together the two men closed the doors to the baggage car, securing them before they looked after the horses. Their prisoners were slowly acclimating to their cells and apparently too tired to talk.

"Where is Orrin?" Arte asked after a moment.

"He and John have been clearing the snow off the tracks, I'd imagine he's up ahead."

The train crew had been working since daybreak in the snow, whilst keeping the train at a rolling boil. They would need 100 feet of cleared track to get the engine, hopper and two cars at a high enough rate of speed so that the remaining snow on the track could be pushed out of the way by the plow affixed to the front of the engine. This involved shoveling the snow out of the way then scattering salt over the rails.

In shallow snow, once the train was moving fast enough, the plow was sufficient. Orrin hoped to be out of the mountains and well on their way through the deserts outside of Denver before the 'horrid white stuff' as he called it, got any deeper.

They rolled off the siding and onto the main track just before 12 o'clock.

Once the cells had been rechecked and the prisoners given biscuits, hot coffee and jerked beef for their noon meal, Jim and Arte retired to the varnish car. Both men changed out of the clothing that had become damp, warming themselves with a small measure of brandy and a pot of soup.

Jim satisfied himself that his partner's injuries were as minor as he had made them out to be and before long West found himself alone in the lounge car, his partner retreating to his berth to take a much-needed nap. As they climbed the mountain at 34 miles per hour, the day remaining clear and starting to warm a little despite the altitude, Jim focused on paperwork, getting up twice every hour at un-even intervals to check on their prisoners.

The case they had just finished had been accomplished by working, as Arte liked to put it, together but apart. In the mining town of Holloway, Colorado, Arte had established himself as a peddler turned mercantile owner.

The building that the government had purchased through Arte's cover name was big enough to allow for some tables and chairs along with the merchandise Arte needed to get established. The business had soon lent itself more as a gambling parlor than a mercantile.

This was part of Arte's ultimate goal and he soon had more than a few confidantes out of the populace of Halloway that would report to him, the humble bartender and mercantile owner, the goings on in the mountains around the small municipality.

Reports of haunting noises in the hills and sightings of a massive furry beast, along with the disappearances of several wealthy mine owners and operators in the area, had brought the attention of the secret service and, thus, also the services of one Artemus Gordon and James West.

While Jim traveled around that part of the country conferring with, and checking on various other agents who were stationed in long-term covers, seeing if any of them had heard of someone looking to amass wealth and willing to do it the slow, and hard, way, Arte had worked his way into the heart of the matter and the town, where he kept an ear open.

They'd met only twice during the whole of the case. Once to establish that the first month may have been a total bust, and the second time, on the day that Arte spotted the 'mountain beast' himself. Jim had then spent two weeks on the periphery of the town, out in the cold, watching as winter took firm hold of the mountains, and hunting down every spotting, attack, or rumor to do with the creature.

They'd finally discovered the solution a week ago. A pair of circus performers, accustomed to spending hours, one on the shoulders of another, had crafted a giant, man-like, fur covered suit, made from bear and elk hides, that they wore, while clomping around the forests, terrorizing the locals.

The actual killings had been the work of another circus performer, a strong man, capable of felling a human being with a single fatal blow. The bodies of their victims were then marked up with knives, and the claws taken from a dead wolf, and were placed where they could be 'discovered'.

The farce had been working for months. The mines were avoided because of the danger and each death was ruled 'accidental'. Not one eye was batted when the old man with the cane and the monical entered the assayer's office after every death, and bought up the unclaimed mines.

The old man, it turned out, wasn't old at all, but a very young and talented, if twisted, thespian and former circus artist who had created this scheme. Planning to own all the mines in the area, and to hire the remaining miners to work them, he and his cohorts had every intention of creating a monopoly on the mountain, and someday claiming it all as theirs.

While the monopoly wasn't necessarily illegal, the murder was, and in a few short days Arte and Jim put a stop to it.

Now all four accomplices were sleeping in their cells, curled under the blankets provided, worn out, just as Arte had hoped they would be.

By two o'clock that afternoon the train had crested the highest point of the mountain railroad and begun its journey down hill. This would happen at even slower a pace as their ascent. The curves of the tracks were just as severe going down as they had been going up, but gravity and the weight of the train would endeavor to pull them down faster than the curves would allow, and extra friction was needed to prevent the engine from flying off the rails.

By two-thirty the skies had become overcast. By three o'clock snow had begun to fall in tiny crystalline flakes that appeared not to be accumulating, only flittering about, teasing at the windows.

When Jim rose from the writing desk at three-fifteen, headed for the baggage car to check on the prisoners, the squealing of the brakes were his only warning before the cars jolted and he was thrown against one of the walls.

Bracing himself in the narrow hallway between Arte's lab and the galley, Jim waited, grabbing hold of the door jamb until the brakes were finally released and the train returned to its normal rhythm.

In the baggage car the prisoners had been awakened by the jolt and two of them, the men who had portrayed the mountain beast by standing, one on the shoulders of the other, were clinging to the bars of their cells fearfully.

The minute they spotted Jim entering the car the shorter of the two cried, "You've got to let me out of here. I can't stay here any longer."

Jim remembered Arte referring to this one as Bo. The man was about four feet tall, thin and muscular. The body of a tumbler with a Mediterranean face and thick, curling black hair. "In two hours you're going to be in a cell that's been cut out of a mountainside, you might as well get used to this while you can." Jim said.

"You can't do that to Bo, mister." The other tumbler cried. Taller than his partner by half a foot, this one had a slightly lighter complexion and hair color but clearly came from the same part of the world as his compatriot. "He gets crazy if you keep him locked up. He'll tear his hair out, or worse.." This one was named Tom, Jim recalled.

"Maybe next time, assuming you get a next time, you'll consider that before you go about murdering hapless miners."

The biggest of the four prisoners, the former strong man who stood at just under six feet, the blanket over his shoulders not wide enough to wrap around his whole chest, grunted from where he stood, glaring unblinking at West. He had been the first man placed in a cell and from the moment he was locked up he had taken that stance. Not moving, not saying a word, only staring angrily, first primarily at Arte, and now at Jim. "Larry..." Jim greeted, as he had gotten into the habit of doing every time he came to check on the prisoners. So far Larry remained uncommunicative.

"They weren't hapless." The fourth prisoner spoke, still curled into the corner of his cell, wrapped in his blanket. "They were fools, but perfectly capable of defending themselves. It was nature's own divining hand that decided their fate. Not these men."

Despite his youth, the mastermind of the whole plot, Thaddeus Langford Peach, carried a weight of wisdom and drama on his shoulders like his own spiritual burden, giving the impression that he was much older than his years. It was this maturity that had allowed him to convince everyone in the town that he was a retired gentleman of eighty, instead of an actor and criminal, barely twenty years old. Arte himself had admitted he was astonished at how intelligent the young man proved to be, and had warned Jim more than once, before going to sleep, that Thaddeus was the most dangerous of the four, and that despite his weak and pale appearance, no chances were to be taken with him.

"And you were just there to pick up the pieces, eh, Tad?" Jim spoke from the bin mounted on the wall between Larry and Peach's cells, out of which he was scooping some oats and feed. This he measured into two feed bags that he placed over the noses of Blackjack and Arte's mare, Texas.

"It's Thaddeus...or MR. Peach." The young man sputtered, getting to his feet. "And what I did after those unfortunate men died was in every way legal. If unorthodox."

Jim shook his head, eyeing the tumbler named Bo who was so agitated now that he was pacing in his cell. As there wasn't enough room for a proper pace he was mostly turning in circles, mumbling to himself. His partner stood against the bars of his cell, his arms through the gaps trying to draw Bo's attention, but it seemed the smaller man was in his own world.

"Tad..." Jim said, intentionally riling the young man. "Somethin' you might consider. Bo over there isn't going to last long in jail. All he needs is one prosecutor giving him a break on a jail sentence in exchange for full cooperation, and you're going down for every one of those murders."

That thought seemed to give the arrogant young man pause and for a few minutes he focused entirely on the tumbler across the length of the car from him, growing silent.

Once the horses were fed and watered Jim handed out cups of water to each of the prisoners, letting them drink one man at a time. It would take them until dinner to reach Saguache, but he figured the prisoners could get a warm meal once they were inside the jail. There wasn't much logic to feeding them right before giving them a prime opportunity to escape.

As Jim passed by Bo and Tom, on his way back to the varnish car, Bo suddenly leapt toward West, clanging against the bars of his cell and jamming his arms through the gaps. Instinctively Jim jumped away from him, his hand going to his gun. A second later the brakes squealed and the train lurched. The horses whinnied loudly at the upset and every man in the car staggered on his feet, including Jim, who took a second step backward.

The step brought him too close to Tom's cell and Jim felt an arm clamp around his neck too soon to step away. Instantly there was crushing pressure against his Adam's apple. His shoulders and the back of his head were being ground into the bars, and the pressure was increasing every second. Jim's gun was already in his hand and he brought it up, pointed it at Bo's cell and fired, the shot going easily wide of the ducking prisoner. The sound filled the room, and hopefully, woke Arte in the other car, but did nothing to stop the man choking him to death.

The fingers of Jim's left hand were white with the pressure he was trying to put on the wrist of the man choking him. Tom seemed not to have a nerve there, or anywhere, and West's world was starting to blacken around the edges. He fired his gun a second time and felt something punch into the skin against his back, at first nothing more than a pinch, then blossoming into a burning, ripping sensation.

"Let him go, or Bo dies, Tom." Arte's voice thundered into the car on the heels of a blast of cold air. Gordon had barely managed to get a pair of pants on before crossing from the varnish car to the baggage car, but he was very well armed, a pistol in both hands, and he was mad as hell.

When Tom didn't immediately respond Arte cocked the gun in his right hand and shot into Bo's cell. Expertly aimed, the bullet nicked the man's arm, sending a spurt of blood through the air and setting the tumbler to wailing in surprise and pain.

"Next one kills him, Tom. Who do you care about more? Bo? Or doing what Peach tells you?" Arte demanded, trying not to look at his partner.

Jim was pale and stiff. Tom's grip on West had loosened enough for the man to breathe but there was something else wrong with him, and Arte had the feeling it had to do with the drops of blood collecting between his partner's feet.

"You alright, Bo?" Tom asked, wide eyes struggling to see over the top of the head of the man he still held captive.

"No I ain't alright, that crazy law man shot me! I'm bleedin' everywhere like a stuck pig!"

"I will let that man bleed to death.." Arte began, despite knowing that the wound wasn't bad enough to cause that to happen. "...slow and painful, unless you let go of my partner now."

From across the room Peach cleared his throat. He said nothing, barely even moved. There was only the slightest of noises from him and instantly Tom's concerned expression was focused solely on the man easily ten years younger than him. Peach gave a single shake of the head, denying Tom permission to save his friend, and Tom's attention returned to Artemus.

There was more blood collecting at Jim's feet, some of the shock was wearing off and the blue-eyed man's carefully controlled expression was breaking apart little by little. He was in pain and struggling not to show it. Arte took a deep breath and shot once more into Bo's cell, concentrating on his shaking gun hand, making absolutely certain that the bullet would hit close enough to the prisoner to scare him, but not actually kill him.

The final shot did the trick and Tom stepped away from West, and back against the wall of his cell. Arte lunged forward, slipping his arm under Jim's shoulder, delving down until he could support his partner's weight by grabbing hold of the waist of his pants. Without so much as a second glance he dragged Jim out into the cold between the baggage car and the varnish car, then back into the warmth of the car they called home and all the way to the berth that he had only just left.

Already he could feel Jim's blood smearing over his bare arm, his bare foot slipping on a drop or two as they passed between cars.

Jim was struggling to breathe, his left hand curved behind his back, trying to reach the thing that was moving, pinching every time he tried to step, and tearing the rest of the time.

Arte wasn't sure that he could lay his partner down without hurting him, so he guided Jim into a sitting position on his bunk, and supported his partner with an arm across his chest while he leaned him forward so that he could get a look at the wound. A wound out of which still protruded a vicious, black handled knife. Tilting at a 45 degree angle to his back, the entry point somewhere near the lowest rib on Jim's right side, the blade had gone in to the hilt. If the length of the handle was any indication the wound was at least three inches deep.

"How bad..?" Jim managed to ask, the question preceded and followed by gasps for air that seemed to take every muscle in West's body. Shock and pain deprived the body of oxygen, Arte knew, but he was more afraid that the blade had done damage to a lung. Jim's shortness of breath made him fear it all the more.

"Lay down for a minute. I've gotta get something to stop the bleeding." Arte started to guide Jim down on his left side, turning to run for the galley. As soon as he moved the train hit a curve, the brakes squealing, but this time the train didn't slow. If anything they seemed to pick up speed and Arte jumped back into his room, securing Jim to the berth as the varnish car began to tilt dangerously to one side.

"Hurts, Arte." Jim grunted, clinging to his partner's arm with a steely grip, even as Arte clung to the bunk, trying to keep himself from falling on West, and West from falling out of the bed. The curve they had hit was a long one, and they were moving too fast for it. The tracks had to have been covered in more than just snow because their speed was increasing still, the weight of the train pulling it down the mountain.

"I know it does. Hang on." Arte grunted through clenched teeth. "Once we get around this curve we'll get you fixed up."

A moment later they rocked in the other direction, the whole car settling back on the rails and wobbling back and forth. Something glass shattered in the lounge and Arte could hear pots and pans tumbling noisily to the floor in the galley.

Once they were stable, Arte launched to his feet, rounded the corner between his room and the galley, hopped over the scatter of still rolling pans and ripped a handful of towels out of a drawer. He grabbed for a bottle of cooking brandy with the other hand.

He was nearly back into the hall when they hit another curve. The varnish car tilted again and Arte swung a foot behind him to steady himself, felt the cold iron of the pots under the ball of his foot, then felt the floor fly out from underneath him. His main concern to protect the glass brandy bottle in his hand, he tucked it against his chest and went down on the side opposite, most of his weight coming down on the jumble of pots and already bruised ribs. His head bounced off the floor, jostling his brain. A second later pain blossomed behind his eyes and he gasped, struggling to pull in enough air to keep himself from passing out.

For a second time the varnish car finally settled and Arte painfully dragged himself to his feet, escaping the death trap of the kitchen, and stumbling with a wide stance down the short hall. He found his partner lying on his stomach on the floor of his small room.

"Jim?" He couldn't tell if West was awake or not, and stepped over the prone man's legs before he carefully set his hard-won supplies on the bed. "Jim-uh!"

The brakes engaged again, this time catching, and causing Jim and Arte to start flying in a new direction, only Jim didn't stop himself and as his partner started to slide across the floor Arte grabbed for Jim's waist band and held on to West with one hand, and the corner of his fixed bunk with the other.

The brakes continued to squeal, slipping on occasion, but gradually slowing the train's almost uncontrolled descent. Arte held on, knowing all he could do was wait for the wild ride to end. Even bumping the knife in his friend's back, while the train swayed and see-sawed, would be deadly for his partner.

Arte could only imagine what was happening in the baggage car, or worse still what had _been_ happening in the engine, even before he was awakened by gun shots from his nap.

He'd been having the nicest dream too.

The train was grinding to a halt, the car still tilted downward indicating that they were on a fairly steep incline. But they were stopped.

Arte let go of the bunk first, then loosened his grip on Jim's pants. He took a deep breath then straightened, getting himself to his knees, and holding the breath until he saw Jim take one. The movement brought him more relief than he thought it would, not only proving that his partner was still alive, but that the blade probably hadn't pierced a lung.

Carefully Arte ripped the already torn fabric of his partner's jacket, lifting the widened hole around the hilt of the knife. He tore Jim's shirt open too, then wiped at some of the blood covering his skin. He could see the shape of the blade outlined perfectly under the surface of the skin along Jim's rib cage.

The point of the blade had probably hit the rib and redirected the deadly metal away from Jim's vital organs and into the fleshy part of his side.

Painful, very painful, but not fatal. Not if Arte could stop the bleeding and keep the wound from getting infected.

Not wanting to waste time, or run the risk of Jim waking up at the worst possible moment, Arte grabbed for the towels and the brandy, dumped a measure over the wound on Jim's side, then carefully and smoothly worked the blade free of his back.

His partner moaned and squirmed a few times but otherwise remained still. A torrent of fresh blood followed the extraction and Arte clamped a brandied towel over the wound, holding it there and finally slumping against the side of the bunk. He felt exhausted, despite having just awakened. He couldn't have been up more than twenty minutes but it felt like an eternity.

The train was still too, finally, and he could hear the engine in front chuffing . The wind had been howling and the sudden lack of brakes squealing and wheels clacking on the rails brought to his attention the sound of ice pattering against the windows.

Another moan came from the floor and Arte lifted the towel briefly to check on the progress of the bleeding. The wound was vertical, about an inch long, and a centimeter wide. Under the skin it was already beginning to bruise in a thin line along West's rib.

Even as he worried about the blood seeping out of the hole, Arte would have to keep an eye on the bruise developing under the surface of the skin. If worse came to worse, they were at that moment surrounded by nature's own best medicine when it came to stopping a lot of bleeding.

He got his first glimpse of the snow when a second later Orrin, shivering and wet despite the heavy coat he'd pulled on over stained coveralls, poked a pale and terrified head into Arte's cabin. He'd clearly been rapidly checking each room for the two secret service men because he appeared, then disappeared, just as quickly before realizing that he had found who he was searching for.

"Are the prisoners still secure?" Arte asked, before Orrin could start inquiring.

The engineer pushed his cap back on his head, staring at the mess of blood that Arte had begun to realize was almost everywhere, mostly because of the rolling around he and Jim had been doing. "Yeah...yeah." The man finally answered, shaking himself out of his reverie, "That big'un got knocked on the head, and the little one is bleedin'. Horses are fine too." A look of guilt flooded the man's face along with a reddening flush. "I'm real sorry, Mr. Gordon. There wasn't time for any kind of warning and that first curve was just coated with ice and-"

"This isn't any of your fault, Orrin." Arte said, once more checking the wound, pleased to see the blood flow slowing to a trickle. "Are you and John alright?"

Orrin nodded. "Left John in the engine to keep the fire going. We're in some dire straights at the moment, Mr. Gordon."

"I imagined so.." Arte sighed, then looked to the bed. The sheets were splattered with blood but there wasn't any point in changing them until the wound on Jim's back was properly bandaged. He needed more than towels and brandy now, and looked to Orrin considering for a moment before he said, "Help me get him on the bed."

The two of them worked together, lifting the smaller but more muscular man onto the mattress. With Orrin's help, Arte removed the ruined jacket and shirt all-together, surprised that his partner was still unconscious, until he remembered that Jim had to have gotten from the bed to the floor somehow. A brief search of his partner's skull revealed a goose egg just above the hairline. Arte felt a little like an absentee babysitter, not paying enough attention to his charge to prevent him from falling out of bed the minute he left the room.

"Stay with him while I grab a few things, will you?" Arte asked, straightening with a wince before he padded back out of the room. The minute he had turned, the new bruises on his side made themselves known and he had to pause in the hall to acclimate to them. His vision was also for some reason foggy and Arte began to wonder if he hadn't hit his head harder than he first thought, when he realized that it wasn't fog but smoke.

Smoke coming from the lounge car.

He charged down the hall just as Orrin poked his head into the hallway saying something about smelling something burning. Arte remembered hearing glass crashing. He rushed into the lounge of the varnish car in time to see a smoldering, velvet curtain burst into flame.

The glass enclosure of one of the wall sconces had flown off it's bracing, and lay in shattered pieces on the floor. The exposed flame had finally caught the fringe of the velvet bunting that lined the top of the windows of the car, and was now engulfed.

"Orrin, water!" Arte shouted down the hall, ignoring the shattered glass on the floor and grabbing one of the sabers mounted against the wall. Slicing through the bunting on one side of the flames Arte began ripping the burning fabric from its mounting and knocking it to the floor. He could feel some glass pieces under his bare feet, but was more concerned about the still full canister of karosene directly under the flaming bunting, the threat of the cloth on the cieling catching fire, and the thick, oily smoke rapidly filling the car.

By the time he cut the rest of the burning bunting down, the haze had become a thick, noxious fog and both he and Orrin were unable to breathe without their eyes watering and endless coughs racking them. Still Arte waited until the fire was out entirely before he opened a window.

The smoke cleared quickly, responding to the piercing wind that instantly chilled the near naked Arte to the bone. The cold served to exhaust him further and Arte wondered if taking a nap had actually done him any good, after all. The bottom's of his feet were now bleeding, and the minor burns on his fingers and hands were beginning to itch painfully.

Everything had been fine before he fell asleep.

With Orrin's help Arte stood, and limped into the galley where he and the engineer worked together to amass supplies, taking everything they would need down the hall. While Arte finally dressed, pulling on a shirt, then a thick sweater, the task taking twice as long with the burns on his hands, Orrin followed Arte's instructions, cleaning the wound on Jim's back and tightly binding it, wrapping the dressings and piling the padding until there was no longer blood seeping through the bandages.

Arte double checked his partner's breathing and pulse, then they covered him in blankets, treated the cuts on Arte's feet from the glass, and left the varnish car briefly to look after the prisoners.

While they worked to pull the train, and all its citizens, back together, Orrin explained what had been happening in the engine up to that point, and more thoroughly informed Arte of the precise level of 'screwed' that they had thus far reached.

"There's gotta be about eight feet of snow on the track ahead, spread out about a quarter mile. The head of the engine herself is buried about a foot into it. We're not gonna slide any further, and thankfully the smoke stack is free. But this avalanche has to mean the whole slope is unstable. We're stuck right where we don't want to be. We might be able to back her up the mountain but it's all incline behind us til we reach the top, and we might just burn up all our wood tryin'."

"What about digging through the slide?"

Orrin sighed softly, standing in the baggage car with his hands full of medical supplies as the secret service agent worked through the bars to treat the bruise and small cut that had developed on Larry's head. The more challenging task, treating the gunshot wound on the arm of the smaller man, had been their first hurdle, but the wound and the violent train ride had greatly subdued the wounded man and he had been compliant and for the most part silent.

"We could dig through it sure, and we may have to. But that's like digging a hole in the sand in the middle of high tide..."

Arte had already begun to nod, clinging to the bars of the cell to pull his aching body upright. "I understand, it was a foolish question." he mumbled, before he pressed his arm against his throbbing ribs and took a deep breath. "We'll be here a while. We'll need to feed these men, and you and John in short order."

Orrin waited, watching the clearly exhausted man who had been his boss for the past four years or longer. He felt the same exhaustion, and knew that Gordon and West had also just finished a tedious, time consuming case. They had a long night ahead of them, and each of them was going to be required to pull more than their weight if they were to survive it. Still the situation could have been much worse.

"You're probably needed back on the engine..." Arte said finally and Orrin reluctantly nodded. "Get on back there. I'll call you through the tube for supper...and Orrin." Arte stuck his hand out and shook the engineer's coal dust covered hand. "Thank you, to both of you..." Arte didn't need to explain why. Orrin merely nodded, then turned and headed back through the baggage car and out to the engine.


	2. Chapter 2

When Jim woke he knew he had a fever. He could feel the sweat on his forehead, and the heat creating a headache and tightening his throat, and it felt like someone had superheated a metal band then cinched it tight around his ribcage. Movement at all, even breathing, was painful, but he was awake and still alive, and those things together prompted him to be grateful.

He was laying on his stomach and covered in blankets, and as he turned his head, he realized he wasn't alone either.

Arte sat beside the berth, Gordon's berth Jim realized, slumped back in one of the chairs from the lounge with a footstool propping his bandaged feet. He'd dressed more fully since Jim had last seen him, and also bandaged his hands for some reason. The bruise on his cheek had deepened, and he was sleeping. A cup of tea and a second cup of broth sat on the table between the two men and Jim watched the still warm vapors rising from it, wishing he was hungry for it.

Experimentally, Jim reached out a hand for one of the cups, clasped his fingers around the delicate handle then concentrated hard on getting the cup off the saucer and to his lips without spilling it. The effort was tiring but successful and Jim felt a nonsensical rush of victory as the broth came within smelling distance.

Onion and beef, thick and still warm. Jim took a sip, felt the warmth work its way down his sore throat and into his belly, then wished he wasn't so far from the table. He fought sleep, taking a second sip, then a third, managing to get most of the small amount of soup into his stomach before his body overruled his will and he passed out again.

* * *

Arte woke to a thundering crash, followed by the varnish car rocking violently. He threw his hands out, encountering the arms of the chair he had forgotten he was in, then looked to the bed to make sure his partner still safely lay there. When the rocking stopped he bended stiff knees, put his bandaged feet on the floor, and stood, groaning at the stiff bruises on his ribs.

The impact to the car had come from the opposite side of the train, and Arte thought he had a pretty good idea of what it had been. He was, without thinking, convinced that he had been only asleep a few minutes until he looked back at Jim and noticed the empty tea cup, spilling a small rivelet of beef broth onto the pillow.

He took a deep breath, fighting a wave of relieved emotion. Not only had Jim wakened, but he had, on his own, taken nourishment; without coaxing or help. Arte's hypothesis about the severity of the wound had to have been at least partially right. He put his hand against Jim's forehead, feeling just a little bit of heat.

The touch immediately woke his partner, who shifted, moaned softly then turned his head on the pillow and went back to sleep. That would have been the sleeping powder he'd put in the broth, knowing it might be the only thing that would keep Jim down and healing. There was no way for West to find out, unless Orrin told him, and he had threatened to chop one of the engineer's arms off if he so much as whispered a word, so was fairly certain there was little to worry about in that department.

All that remained was to check on the prisoners and Arte figured socks and shoes would be advisable. His watch told him he had been sleeping for hours, and if the severity of the whining wind was any indication, it was very possible that ice and snow had been accumulating steadily in those hours. As the bandages on his feet were more painful than the cuts themselves, Arte removed them before donning footwear, pulling on his sheepskin coat and venturing down the hall to the outside door.

The dark gray mass that he could see pressed against the glass alarmed him just a little, but as he grasped the handle, the knob turned freely. He pulled the door inward and was met with a wall of white that instantly made the air seem thinner. Snow was packed solid against the front end of the varnish car.

Arte closed the door, hard, thinking that it might dislodge the wall. Allowing himself to hope that it was only a foot or so of blown snow, pressed against the door. When he opened the door again some of the snow fell in, but did not appear to be sloughing off in the other direction.

Arte once more shut the door, having to use a little force this time with the snow that had collected at the jam.

He needed a pole, or a long stick. Preferably something hollow and thin. He shivered involuntarily as he headed for the lounge. The wall of snow had acted like stacks of ice in a reefer car, instantly fridgerating the hallway.

Arte grabbed one of the fire irons that would do the job, and after piling wood onto the coals in the stove, he took the four foot long blow tube with him back to the door. One end was narrow, meant to be applied to the mouth. The other end belled like a trumpet. The simple iron tube was used to direct concentrated air on the coals of a fire, superheating them faster than a bellows would, while making less of a mess.

Arte opened the hallway door and poked the narrow part of the metal stick at the snow high in the corner of the door, surprised at the resistance the snow was giving him. Gradually the hole opened however and he dug upward, judging the packing to be almost three and a half feet deep before he felt the stick break free of the surface.

Better still he was greeted not only by fresh air, but daylight. Dim, but definitely day. That meant that his watch had stopped, and that the storm had raged all night. Arte had a sinking feeling that the rumbling he'd heard was an avalanche breaking free of the mountain side and if it had buried the varnish car, it had probably also buried the other cars and the engine.

He started to calculate in his head what he would need to safely dig himself and his partner out of their own car before they started worrying about the others. While he thought he moved, pulling on gloves, scarf and a hat, collecting a small folding ladder that he had stolen from a janitorial closet a year before, a shovel and a broom. All of these things he dumped at the hall door, not realizing that the warmth creeping into him was from the activity, and not the fire that should have been busily eating at the wood in the pot belly stove.

He worked for an hour at the tiny hole, perched on the ladder, widening it and shoving the snow outside instead of letting it fall in, careful to keep the hole cone shaped so that the wider opening was above his head and that which he excavated remained supported.

It was slow going and his legs were soon soaked by the snow that he was leaning on. The sheepskin coat kept his torso warm and dry but more than a few drops of snow had fallen between this neck and his collar and melted down his back.

Cold and wet he decided to take a short break, feed the fire, and check on Jim. He expected to be flooded with warmth as he entered the lounge but found it cold as ice. Alarmed he jerked open the door of the pot belly stove to find the wood he had put there, untouched by flame, and the coals barely alive underneath.

"Stupid!" Arte shouted, slamming the door of the stove. He dropped his forehead against the top of his wrist, remembering not to disturb his palms in the last second. The burns on his hands had been protesting to the heavy work of moving the snow, even under the bandages, and he knew he was forming blisters on top of the already tender skin. The hours work had been tiring but he'd kept at it, knowing it had to be done, and thinking that he would have a warm train car to retreat to. He'd completely forgotten that it was entirely possible that the smoke stack for the pot belly stove, not more than a few inches higher than the roof, would also be buried. Without oxygen, the fire wouldn't burn.

The smoke stack had to be his priority now and Arte wondered if it would be faster to climb through the hole he had created at the other end of the car, or start a new one at this end. One glance at the dark, gray sheet pressed against the glass of the lounge door, told him it was of course also buried.

"Arte?"

"Jim!?" Arte looked up surprised at the pained face of his partner standing in the door to the lounge. He'd wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, and the odd bulge in the back told Arte that Jim was holding his side with one hand. "What are you doing up?"

"Is cold." Jim said, blinking slowly, still groggy. "And you're shouting." Blue eyes took in the charred bunting hanging from the wall, the one wall sconce missing it's shade, and the scatter of glittering green glass on the floor. His partner, fully dressed, his face red from the cold, staring with dismay at the unlit potbelly stove. The odd lighting that made one end of the car look like it was night, and the other end look like it was morning.

Leaning against the door frame, Jim pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, wishing he could stop the little shivers that were making the pain in his side all the worse. "Are we buried?"

"Looks like it, yeah." Arte said, finally standing and moving to the door in the lounge. He opened it cautiously, swinging it inward, and looking at the wall of packed snow, as he pulled his gloves back on. "It's covered the stove pipe and we're not gonna have any heat until we dig it out." At least, Arte thought, if the engine was still producing steam at all, the horses, and the criminals in the baggage car would be warm. Goodie for the criminals.

"I'll get dressed and help ya..."

"Unless you're planning on bleeding all over the snow to make the job more colorful, you'll help me by trying to sleep, Jim."

The blue eyes opened a little more, a wry smile coming to the younger man's lips. He didn't respond verbally however, merely turning and padding back down the hallway, dissappearing into his own private compartment.

Arte groaned and turned to the wall of snow, doing the trick with the blow pipe once more, only this time the snow proved to be deeper. At least four feet or more. Arte started tossing the stick up the narrow chute of snow, like a pressure drill, until it popped free and he could see daylight. Four and half feet of snow.

By the time Arte had a big enough hole to climb out of the lounge end of the car, more than an hour had passed and he realized that his partner had not, after all joined him. Arte's quiet moment of victory turned to concern, and despite the still pressing need to free the smoke pipe of the stove, Arte stopped working long enough to move down the hall and peer into Jim's berth. The man was sitting upright on his bed, a shirt on and halfway into a sweater, but fast asleep. Arte covered him with another blanket, but didn't try to lay him down for fear that he would awaken and start spouting more nonsense about being helpful.

Gordon went back to the job at hand, cutting hand and foot holds into the snow and finally climbing up the four and a half foot tube.

The wind outside was bitter cold, the skies nearly clear. The sun hadn't fully risen over the peaks surrounding them yet, making Arte realize that the light he had seen two hours ago was a false dawn. The sun was coming though and he hoped that it would take some of the bite out of the air. The track to the rear of the train was covered in a cascade of snow and debris that gradually decreased as the track curved to the left and up out of sight. Arte turned carefully, sitting on the lip of the hole he had dug, to look over the rest of the train.

He was shocked to find a mile of empty track going down the mountain, buried in littered snow but no baggage car, hopper or engine. There should have been three similar piles of snow at precisely the same height as that which had buried the varnish car, but the mounds of snow were substantially reduced beyond where he perched.

Carefully Arte climbed out ontop of the car, sinking about a foot into the snow with every step. He made his way to the left edge of the car, training his eyes along the path the avalanche had taken. For more than a mile trees had been stripped of their branches, whole boulders had been knocked from perches they might have occupied for centuries, and chunks of mud and clay stained the white of the fresh snow, making a reddish brown streaked mess at the bottom of the steep mountain side.

There were, however, no broken bits of the engine or the baggage car, no bodies of horses or prisoners, no scattered piles of wood or lost looking engineers and firemen. The engine to the baggage car had dissappeared without a trace.

Arte climbed back to the mole hole he had made and got back down into the varnish car long enough to retrieve his shovel and pace out the distance from the door to the pot belly stove. Measuring the same distance from the top of the car was tricky but he got to the approximate location and started shoveling snow, tossing it on the down hill side of the car.

He worked until his back ached, then worked some more. The avalanche had dumped twigs and branches, rocks and stones, and even a poor dead squirrel down onto the solitary car and Arte dug through it all, feeling like an amatuer archeologist desperate for the treasure of King Tut's tomb...and very afraid he wasn't even in Egypt. The snow was to his waist when he finally hit pay dirt, or the top of the varnish car. He widened the hole gradually in all directions, working well until the sun had risen over the car. The top layer of snow, which had been fairly well caked to begin with, only became heavier as it melted.

Arte had taken off his jacket, working up a sweat despite the cold of the air. He was exhausted and swaying on his feet, sometimes held up only by the walls of snow around him, when he finally found the stove pipe.

The weight of the snow had dented the tin cap, but Arte forced it back into some semblance of its original shape. He dug the snow out for a foot around it before he considered the job done, and crawled onto the crust and down the length of the car, dragging the shovel and his coat behind him, not trusting his legs to support him.

When he got to the hole that led down into the varnish car he got one foot in a foot hold before the sun weakened packing collapsed and he, and about three shovels-full of snow, went sliding into the lounge. His foot caught the top of the ladder and he managed a semi graceful, tuck-and-roll landing. The floor felt like heaven, but after working in the sun, the air in the varnish car was deadly and Arte forced himself upright and crawled, jerking open the pot belly stove.

The coals were still there, barely. Arte blew on them, kneeling on the floor and imploring with his last breaths that the coals should live, breathe, expand...heat. They grew, and he fed them, slipping a rolled up scrap of paper between the stacked logs. Eventually it lit and the coals glowed and the logs caught.

He felt like the man who invented the wheel, the steam engine, the train. He felt like the character in his favorite novel that developed a way to shoot to the moon. He'd spent most of the morning making fire, but he didn't care. He sat as close to the stove as he could get, digging his hands out of the gloves and holding them before the heat source, soaking up the way that the fire tightened the skin on his face and finger tips.

When he finally stood it was to close the outside door, then return to the stove, thrusting out blistered and bandaged hands. The heat was glorious. He'd never felt anything so satisfying in his life, and he was grateful to his partner's ingenuity. Jim's idea to heat the baggage car with steam from the engine had obviously prompted him to stock extra wood in the varnish car. The one thing they wouldn't run out of any time soon was fuel.

After warming himself again, Arte ventured away from the stove to find a stew pot. This he filled with snow from the door at the other end of the varnish car before closing that as well and returning with the pot to the lounge.

His third trip he went into his room and then Jim's, collected every blanket that wasn't covering his partner and deposited the bedding on the settee.

When he returned to Jim's room he realized that the man was awake, and shaking. "Where ya been Arte?" Jim asked, leaning at an awkward angle.

"Went for a stroll..." Arte responded, bending to put his arm and shoulder under Jim's, pulling the man upright, and walking him down the hall and into the now warm and welcoming lounge.

Arte used one hand to pull on a corner of the settee, dragging it closer to the pot belly stove before he set Jim down on it. He was guiding his partner into a laying position when Jim said, "Wait, wait, wait...I'm bleeding again, pal."

Arte pulled the blanket from Jim's shoulders and grimaced at the blood that had soaked through the thick bandages, and the shirt Jim had managed to don. "What were you doing, dancing a jig?"

"It was cold, Arte, I had to do something to stay warm."

"Ha!" The bandages were still in his room, and Arte had intended to get the lounge chair from there as well. "You alright there?"

Jim nodded, leaning as close to the warmth from the stove as he could.

Arte left, returning with the chair in one hand and a full pillow case in the other.

"What about Orrin and the prisoners?" Jim asked as Arte set the chair down, put the pillow case near the settee, then went about cutting carefully through the bandages. Gordon had enough to change the dressing this time, and had collected his soiled sheets to boil and dry for future use as bandages. As long as he kept Jim from participating in any marathons Arte was fairly certain he would have the injury under control.

"They're gone..." Arte answered quietly, ignoring the surprised look Jim gave him, finally cutting through the last layer and carefully peeling the bandages back. The bottom most layers came away easily, soaked through with blood. Jim tensed, but didn't make a sound.

It was the shape and position of the wound that was causing the problem. Any move Jim made was going to jostle it open. Even breathing was opening and closing the gap in the skin. There was some redness around it, but not enough to worry Arte yet about infection. The bruise that had formed where the blade stopped was much bigger than it had been before.

"What are you waiting for, Arte?"

"Considering stitches."

"Stop considering, the answer's no."

Arte stood, moving stiffly to the cupboard where they kept an inordinately well stocked medical kit. He collected soap and a few other materials before he checked the pot of melting snow on the stove. It had already begun to steam, but not yet to boil.

Without boiled water Arte was unwilling to use the soap alone to clean the wound. Second consideration left him realizing that stitches might not be useful, given that they too could tear open easily. Keeping his partner still for longer periods of time was the only answer...but as to cleaning the wound.

"Alright..." Arte said finally. "Then we'll try salt water first."

As Arte disappeared into the kitchen Jim closed his eyes. Everything he did seemed to affect the pain at his side, generally robbing him of breath and making any independent action almost impossible. When he was finally able to find a position that took pressure off the wound, the other muscles in his back and side would protest, cramping viciously. The only positions that didn't hurt were standing upright, and lying flat on his stomach.

Worse still his partner looked half-dead on his feet. The still thick beard he hadn't had the chance to shave off had a scattering of salt and pepper in it, graying smartly at his temple. Other than the wind burn high on his cheek bones and forehead, and reddening his nose, Arte was pale. As Jim watched him prepare a salt water solution in a shallow basin, Gordon would sway every few minutes, blinking his eyes like he was having trouble seeing.

"What time is it?"

Arte set the basin down on the floor next to the settee, then checked his pocket watch, remembering only after he got it open that it had stopped earlier and he hadn't rewound it. "No idea. Probably somewhere near noon." He responded, tossing the ineffective time piece onto the settee before he soaked a cloth with salt water and started cleaning the skin around the wound. More than a few stray drops of salt water dribbled down Jim's back, rolling over the open wound causing Jim's whole body to jerk.

"What...ah...what happened to the...ach...to the-um..."

Arte was wincing in sympathy for his partner each time he jumped, but not really paying attention to the question. When he finally caught on, he spoke quickly and efficiently, his hands working in the same manner to get the painful process over with.

"I don't know, Jim. Maybe the other cars were carried off the track by the force of the snow. I couldn't see any debris below but they could have been forced all the way down the mountain for all I know. Hold still. There has to be at least four feet of snow covering the ground around us, about the same depth encasing the car. It's all settled snow though...I'm SORRY Jim."

"S'fine just...feel free to be done at any time."

"Almost.."

Both men fell silent as Arte concentrated on the worst of it, then finally dropped the blood soaked rag into the basin and started covering the wound again, wrapping it with a pressure bandage between each layer.

By the time he finished Jim was breathing hard and looked drained and pale. Arte helped him onto his stomach, pushed a pillow under his head, then covered him with several blankets. Jim's breathing settled, then stabilized and he was sleeping a minute later.

Arte sat back in his chair, his hands shaking. His stomach was growling reminding him that he hadn't eaten since noon the day before. Jim too would need nourishment.

There was several tons of snow to shovel in the mean time and any approaching fronts to worry about.

Another idea had crept into his mind while he'd been concentrating on his partner. The possibility that the train was gone because the prisoner's had somehow escaped, taken over the engine, and forced their way through the snow that had been blocking it the night before.

The idea struck him at first as preposterous but as Arte dragged himself to his feet and went about fixing a meal he kept running it over in his mind, until slowly the possibility became more and more likely.

By the time he got a thick, brothy stew prepared, using the last of the fresh beef they had, Arte had the beginnings of a plan. As he had done the first time, he drugged Jim's portion with sleeping powder, waking his partner long enough for him to drink it, which he insisted on doing himself, then fall asleep again.

Arte ate, drinking two cups of hot tea before he filled the boiling pot with more snow, changed into dry clothes again, and went down the hall to the hole he had cut in the snow at the front of the car.

His goal was to free the door and the platform, then as much of the roof as possible before night fell.

The snow started to fall two hours after he started working. By that time his eyes were burning so badly from the harsh light reflecting off the brilliant snow, Arte would have welcomed a hurricane if it meant the sun was blotted out for a few minutes. The overcast skies gave him a reprieve that let the pounding in his skull slack off, and he ignored the gay flakes drifting gently around him. He'd already cleared the front platform of snow, and knocked away the wall encasing the front end of the car leaving only a sea of four foot deep drifts covering the track ahead. He was working on the roof when he heard the strange bellow.

It sounded like a bear, or a moose. Something large and barrel chested, and wounded. He thought it might have come from above and stood on the car's roof, catching his breath and listening intently. After nothing but silence for two minutes Arte turned back to the two foot wide, four foot high, five foot deep block of snow that he had been excavating, leaned his shoulder into it, and slid it off the roof in one piece, watching it fall and shatter against the ground thirty feet below.

Cutting the snow into blocks and shoving them off the roof had proved to be the most effective and time efficient way to clear the snow. His hands...he hadn't looked at them since covering the burns the night before...were becoming increasingly useless, and it was only the cold snow that he occasionally packed into his gloves that kept the pain from stopping his work altogether.

When he paused it was to go inside and check on Jim, feed the fire, drink a cup of tea and make sure that his fingertips weren't becoming frost bitten. Then he went back out and continued his work.

The snow continued to fall, light but steady as the skies grew darker. The sun set early in the mountains, earlier still in the winter months, and once the sun went down the temperature would drop drastically. Arte forced himself to work faster, finally clearing the last of the snow from the roof before his knees gave out and he dropped to all fours on the tarpaper surface.

In the silence that followed he heard the moan again. Crying out around the sounds of the wind and the snow flitting against the surface of the roof.

"I'm with you...buddy." Arte agreed, gasping, rounding up the final bits of energy that he had left to him. He collected the shovel and let it support some of his weight as he walked the length of the car. He barely made it down the ladder on the side of the platform and once inside the car, collapsed in the hall, shutting the door with his foot.

The car was warm, calm, quiet. Arte lay, wondering if he still had the energy to get up, crawl to the lounge, feed the fire once more...would he be able to drink a little soup..wake Jim so that he could eat too?

There was another moan, distant, mixing with the whine of the wind, but very distinctly animal. Arte was surprised he could hear it still. Then wondered if maybe he hadn't been imagining it.

Arte thought about what animal it might be, and about the nature of animals, especially when they were wounded. Finally motivated enough to move Arte sat up, reached out numb fingers and locked the door he had just shut, then worked his way to his feet and step by step reached the lounge.

The car was dark, the windows still covered by snow on both sides of the car, although Arte had discovered that the snow itself acted as an excellent insulator, keeping the lounge car warm with very little fuel. He checked on the level of the water in the large pot that had been kept warm to boiling most of the day. He opened the lounge door long enough to scrape out two cups of snow, then closed it, refilled the pot, threw wood on the low flames and finally sat slowly on the floor between the potbelly stove and the settee.

He leaned back against the hardwood of the furniture, thought long and hard about the pot of soup sitting on the floor near his foot, waiting to be heated, then fell asleep.

When Arte woke next he would have sworn that his hands were on fire. He wasn't entirely certain if he was awake or sleeping, and a vague memory was telling him that he had been very close to a heat source when he fell asleep. He tried to move away, hoping the burning would stop, but was unable to.

Then he tried moving just his hands but found that they had apparently been cut off at the wrists, yet the nerves were still attached. He could feel the pain, but had no ability to control the appendages. On his third try he heard water splashing and worked at forcing his eyes open, and couldn't seem to make them work either.

Frustrated at the out and out mutiny his body had apparently begun as soon as he fell asleep Arte made one final try with his legs, kicking out, hitting something and shoving hard against it. There followed a louder crash, the sound of a very angry voice swearing and something liquid, lapping. Suddenly Arte could move his hands and he did, pulling them free of what had to have been the basin of water.

He was sitting, probably still on the floor with his back to the settee.

"Jim?"

"Arte..." Jim's voice sounded strained, and irritated. "You do that again I'm gonna kill you. And put your hands back in that water."

Timidly Arte pushed his hands out in front of him, found the edge of the basin and started to lower his fingers into the water. The minute the first blister touched its surface it stung and Arte jerked his hands free again.

"Put 'em in, Arte."

"It hurts!"

"It's gonna hurt. That's salt water. Put 'em back in."

Reluctantly Arte lowered his hands, tensing his whole body until they were completely submerged and he had acclimated to the temperature and aggressive nature of the saline solution.

"Ya kicked me, Arte..." Jim groused, sounding as if he was still staying well out of reach.

"Sorry, Jim...I can't open my eyes."

"Yeah, I know that. Whatever you did to 'em, they were crusted shut when I woke up. The bandage there should soak them open if you just leave it."

Arte was quiet for a few minutes, letting his other senses take over, trying to shut out the constantly changing burn in his hands.

"Snow blindness..." He said finally, "...maybe."

They were quiet, Arte stuck in his own dark world, leafing through a half dozen questions, that for some reason he didn't want to ask. They both heard the animalistic bellow as it sounded. Closer, Arte thought, than it had been before.

"That's the third time." Jim commented, his voice nearer. Arte could feel his partner's hands working at something behind his head, then the bandages around his eyes loosened and the slightly cooler air greeted him.

Arte tried blinking his eyes open a few times, wincing at the bright light in the car...only a handful of the sconces had been lit but it felt like he was staring into the sun. Groaning softly Arte closed his eyes again and let his head rest back against the seat of the settee behind him. "That uh...that animal was doing that even earlier today...while I was-"

"Wearing yourself out like an idiot on the roof of the car?" Jim offered.

Arte pursed his lips but kept his mouth shut. Were their positions reversed he would have said the same, or worse. He knew though, that making any excuses would only invite more of his partner's wrath.

"How long have you been awake?"

"An hour...I ate some soup, boiled some bandages...got kicked."

"I'm sorry, Jim."

"Are you hungry?"

He was, but he wasn't going to have Jim feeding him, and couldn't at the moment feed himself so he said, "No."

"Thirsty..."

"No, Jim-"

"One or the other, Arte, take your pick."

Gordon finally opened his eyes to slits and focused on his partner, who was entirely too eager to get him to swallow something.

"You found the sleeping powder?"

Jim nodded, not looking at all pleased about it.

"In my defense, that wound won't stay closed if you keep moving around. Forcing you to sleep was the only way-"

"I'm not complaining, Arte. And I'm not mad at you."

Arte paused, starting to draw his hands out of the water. One look and pointed finger had him reversing the action quickly. "You look mad, Jim."

"I'm not." James said again but his facial expression hadn't changed, and Arte wasn't in any way reassured. "Would you, however, like to tell me what made you think you could single handedly dig us out of an avalanche?"

When the only answer that came to Arte's mind was 'no', he decided to keep his mouth shut, and glared morosely at the edge of the basin that had been set on the lowest rung of the ladder he'd been climbing up and down all day.

"That's what I thought..." Jim said, as if by some logic he had won the argument.

"Did I really kick you?"

"Yes, you really kicked me, Arte?"

"Did it hurt?"

"Nah, I'll be fine, buddy, don't worry about it."

"Can I try again?"

After a moment Jim gave Arte a pleasant smile, and Arte returned it, the space between them slowly changing from a battle ground to a neutral zone.

"Can I try again!?" Jim asked, and both men were soon laughing.

That night both men slept fitfully. Jim, on a mattress on the floor which he insisted was more comfortable than the settee, and Arte on the green, over stuffed couch. One or the other was always awakened at some point in the night and would feed the fire, or refill the constantly steaming pot of water.

Both had limited mobility and by morning, Arte could hardly move at all. The muscles in his arms burned, his hands felt crispy under the bandages, his back was frozen in the position he had slept in and his face and neck were sunburnt.

Jim felt little better.

"Did it snow last night?"

"Lightly...there's a dusting on the platform." Arte answered, wincing as he lifted the cup of soup to his lips, drank, then lowered it again with stiff fingers. He had tried closing his hands earlier and had discovered it was a mistake.

Jim drank his own soup. The inactivity was driving him crazy, but any time he moved, even to stand, the wound at his back pulled. He'd broken it open when Arte had kicked him the night before, and had been forced to change the bandage himself. He wasn't interested in doing it again and was considering slipping sleeping powder into his food himself, just to make the time pass and the healing go faster.

The bellow, now as familiar to them as the sounds of the train, sounded a long, searching cry that echoed down the side of the mountain, rolling over them just as the snow had twenty-four hours before.

"What do you suppose that is?" Arte asked, his ear tilted toward the still snow packed windows.

Jim sat, listening, waiting for the call to come again, which it did, the beast obliging that morning. "A bear or a moose maybe."

"That's what I was thinking."

"A cross between a moose and an elk." Jim amended, but it didn't matter what he called it, the woeful cry sounded almost like a lot of things. But nothing at all exactly like what he knew to be living in those mountains.

"A whale..." Arte said, sipping at his soup, unconsciously following his partner's line of logic. "Or a...rhinocerous."

"When was the last time you heard a rhinocerous, Arte?"

Gordon lowered the cup and tilted his head back to think.

"Never mind, forget I asked." Jim chuckled. He was cut off by the beast, louder. Closer. Quietly he said, "That sounds like its right on us."

Both he and his partner tried to gain their feet at the same time, awkwardly, favoring the various painful spots. They both froze once they were upright, as something heavy landed on the roof.

Arte felt his heart jump into his throat. He'd grown used to the idea that he and his partner were the only living things on the mountain for miles.

Then the bellow sounded, directly above them, a trumpeting groan, moaning at unusual volume from the throat of something that sounded much bigger than the both of them put together. Arte swore softly and backed hurriedly away from the center of the room, his partner backing up further against the wall, both men staring blindly at the ceiling.


	3. Chapter 3

Footsteps, carefully placed, heavy, and long in stride, walking the entire length of the roof in a matter of seconds. Bipodal, Arte thought, and actual feet, not hooves. How many two-legged animals were there that could be that big, that loud, and that agile.

"Jim..." Arte whispered, then froze again when the sound of his voice triggered a hasty move on the roof.

Agile, giant, and possessing incredible hearing. The movements were slower now, the weight of the creature causing the roof to creak. The sounds soon centered over the middle of the car and Arte winced a second later when the pipe leading out of the pot belly stove began to rattle. There was the screech of metal, tin being forcibly ripped apart, then an outraged bellow, and a solid _whomp_!

A billow of ash, soot and hot embers flew out of the grate of the pot belly stove, followed by a steady stream of smoke as the chimney was blocked from above. Then suddenly the smoke was sucked back toward the grate and the chimney began to draw again.

Neither man dared speak, both struggling not to cough or breathe too deeply, Arte eyeing the coals that lay on the carpet smoldering. They heard a grunt from above then the same plume of fire puffed out of the stove, the thick smoke filling the varnish car quickly.

This time Jim moved, eyes watering as he crossed to the map on the wall that slid down to reveal a handful of weapons mounted on hooks. He grabbed a silver studded rifle, and searched the drawer for shells, leaving the lounge all in the span of one held breath.

Arte armed himself as well, taking the hand gun with his initials inscribed in gold filigree on the handle.

Jim tried to open the door at the end of the hall, met resistance, then checked the latch and looked across the length of the car at his partner.

"You locked it?" He whispered.

"Wouldn't you?" Arte asked, wide-eyed, opening the lounge door and peering up the chute of snow. Arte set the ladder in place and climbed up it, bending at the waist to glance at his partner one last time.

Jim gave him a nod and Arte disappeared up the chute, shivering as he encountered the cold, but blessedly clear air. He popped his head up over the lip of the roof and pointed his gun at...nothing. The roof was empty. He looked over his shoulder, perching at the top of the chute before he got his feet under him and stepped out onto the tar paper.

Jim soon joined him , walking the edge of the car that overlooked the ravine, with his gun pointed at the sloping ground.

"Where did it go, Arte?"

Gordon threw his hands out, just as in the dark as everyone else who had been snowed into a varnish car for days. He did his best to bite back a dozen smart comments and went to the side of the car bordered by snow and a hillside, walking its length.

Jim was surprised to hear his partner grunt a moment later, and turned in time to see him sprawl across the car as if he had just tripped over something. Before Arte could even begin to rise an invisible force grabbed him by the ankles, flipping him onto his back. Jim watched as Arte threw up his hands in defense then was yanked with a shout into the air by his shoulders and tossed bodily off the top of the car.

Arte flew laterally through the air before his back impacted the stripped trunk of a pine tree. He cried out, then fell ten feet limply to the snow, rolling twenty more feet before he slid to a halt against the base of a sapling.

Jim jerked his wide-eyed gaze back to the roof of the car where the still invisible force had to be waiting. He could feel it, even though logic denied it and sight alone couldn't prove it, Jim knew the creature was still there. Watching him.

"Arte!" he shouted but got no response.

Backing toward the ladder he had just climbed up Jim tried to calm his heart beat, tried to hear around his own ragged breathing, the gun up and at the ready. But no target presented itself, he could hear no more footsteps. It wasn't until he felt the tiniest of changes in the atmosphere behind him. A little more warmth than before, and the intuitive understanding that something large, and alive, stood at his back.

Fighting the urge to turn, dodge and shoot blindly, Jim lowered the muzzle of the rifle and slowly turned to face the creature, but was once more greeted by nothing but sky and snow. Until the large, warm, leathery hand grabbed his chin, forcing his face up and back. He was staring at a wide expanse of blue sky, whisping clouds promising a coming storm, yet he knew there was a head there. Hidden from view. Fingers were pressing into his cheeks, a palm cupping his chin for what seemed like half an hour before he was simply released. A huff of warm breath feathered the hair on his forehead, then the creature was gone.

Jim stood absolutely still, listening to the footsteps that crossed to the rear of the car then sounded faintly against the snow. He turned cautiously, expecting and seeing nothing but the endless miles of white and the mountainside beyond.

Whatever it had been, it was gone. As he climbed down to the platform and ducked into the car to drop the rifle and locate a length of rope and a blanket, Jim intuitively understood that the beast would be back.

Picking his way down the incline to where his partner lay West called his name repeatedly, hoping for a response that never came.

When he got to him he could see that Arte was breathing, but it was labored. His partner had come to rest against the sapling facing down hill, with his chest against the thin trunk, arms and legs akimbo on either side.

Jim distantly remembered the bruises Arte had sustained a few days ago (it seemed like months) before leaving Holloway.

He put a hand to his partner's brow, then tried shaking him gently to no avail. "Arte, come on, buddy. You gotta be awake so I can look at you."

His next recourse was to rub a little snow against Arte's face. The shock of cold melting into his beard, brought him around.

Jim supported Gordon's back with a hand against Arte's spine, putting his other hand on his right arm. "Arte, you awake?"

Arte's eyes crinkled together as he swallowed, breathing shallow. "Wish I wasn't..." He whispered.

"Can I roll ya onto your back?"

Arte nodded again his right hand instinctively covering the ribs on his left side as Jim pulled him onto his back, propping the folded blanket under his head. West hastily moved the tails of Arte's shirt and jacket out of the way and winced at the bruising that had in a matter of minutes reddened and expanded. Arte's skin over the bruises was hot and tight, and his partner jumped at each touch. The ribs were spongy too; if not broken, then at the very least cracked.

"What did that...beast have against me?" Arte whispered hoarsely.

"Maybe it didn't like being tripped on." Jim responded before looking up the incline to the train car. "I know it hurts, Arte, but do you think you can climb some of that?"

Arte groaned softly, opening pained eyes to stare at what may as well have been Mount Vesuvius. Jim could see he had no interest in moving, but he saw the decision resolve itself in his partner's eyes. Arte swallowed again and said, "I can try..." then put his left hand up.

Jim grabbed it, pulling gently. Arte's shoulders had risen a foot off the snow before he choked on the pain, his face closing up in a wince. He yanked his hand back and curled around his ribs, overtaken by a coughing fit that produced just enough blood to coat his lips.

When the fit finally passed Arte lay, looking wasted, on his right side, returning to the shallow breathing.

Jim felt fear grip him, digging in steel claws and not letting go as he lifted the back of his partner's shirt and saw, for the first time, the rest of the bruising crawling up his back. From Arte's left shoulder to mid-torso was one massive contusion, about the shape and size of the tree trunk Arte had been thrown against.

Jim considered the incline, the length of rope still attached to the platform of the varnish car and his barely conscious partner. "Arte...?"

When there was no response, Jim bent to lightly tap against Arte's cheeks and was happy to have Arte angrily batting his hand away.

"If I got you onto my back, I could get us both up there in one trip. Think you can hang onto me that long?"

Arte's brown eyes opened wider and he gave his partner a look of severe disapproval, mixed with anger and a little questioning of sanity.

"I'd sooner crawl..." Was Arte's response, and he rolled himself towards his stomach, getting his left hand down for support, before he pushed himself onto his hands and knees.

Jim got himself under Arte's right side and they took the first of twenty painful steps up the incline. On step twenty-one Arte's left foot sank sixteen inches into the snow and he went down with it, going to his knees, his breaths harsh, short and congested.

He was shaking his head, without enough breath to actually say the words that Jim wasn't going to allow him to say anyway. Jim didn't let him go, remaining in a half crouch, with his shoulder still under Arte's while the man recovered.

The minute the look of defeat on the older man's face was replaced with a look of determination, Jim gritted his teeth and pulled the man upright and they again began to climb.

They had rested five more times before they reached the varnish car, each resting period coming sooner and lasting longer, but they had made it.

Inside the car, West propped the wounded man against the wall long enough to close the hallway door and lock it, then guided him into the lounge taking more and more of the older man's weight before he managed to set him down on the settee. Automatically Arte leaned toward his wounded side, and Jim did what he could to prop the man up in a quasi-sitting position without putting pressure on his ribs. In the few minutes that Jim took to stock and relight the near dead stove, Arte's breathing improved just a little.

Keeping an ear on his partner Jim filled their water pot to the brim with snow and set what remained of their soup near the base of the stove to warm.

"Jim..?"

"Yeah, Arte."

The look that Arte gave him when Jim finally turned around made the younger man's stomach twist into a knot. Even though he was able to take in more oxygen than before, Arte was breathing heavily and his face was pale and drained under the beard. Concerns about pneumonia were suddenly mixed in with the knowledge that Arte was bleeding internally, and that at least one of his lungs had to have been compromised.

"You should go-" Arte breathed, looking like he was fighting to stay awake, even while he was fighting for air.

"I'm not gonna leave ya alone, Arte."

Gordon closed his eyes, straightening his torso with a fierce grimace, an involuntary moan of pain followed on the air of the next few breaths and Jim was surprised to see a drop of moisture roll down his partner's face. If the pain was that bad...

"Jim, I'm not-" Arte began shaking his head, his eyes still closed tight.

"Yes, you are, Arte."

"Jim..."

"Shut up and rest will ya."

Arte's eyes finally opened, a weary but definite smile coming to his lips, before his face blanked, his eyes rolled back and he slumped, suddenly unconscious.

Jim rushed across the ash strewn floor, checking on Arte's breathing and pulse even as he fixed the pillows and blankets under the man so that the pressure was off his bruised side. He was breathing, but it was rough, and his pulse was weaker than Jim liked it. Worse still James West knew there was nothing he could do to stop it...this headlong rush toward death that had begun even before Arte got tossed off the roof of the car.

They had been fighting tooth and nail, wearing themselves out, trying to defeat nature, the devices of scheming criminals, and now this...beast...Jim was reluctant to admit that Arte was right, at least partially. They had exhausted their options staying there in the varnish car. They would be out of food soon, and wood even sooner. The snow wasn't going to melt in time for them to make a hasty escape and the beast...it would return. Jim knew it would return.

The upside, if there was to be one at all, was that they were near the top of the mountain and the closest available help would be found at the bottom. But that was miles away and Jim wouldn't...couldn't leave his partner.

An hour of angrily stewing turned into a brain storming session that quickly hatched an idea. Jim spent the night working on it, checking on his partner every half hour. It was one in the morning before Arte woke again. Jim didn't realize he was awake until the older man started coughing, struggling to dampen the sound.

Jim was at his side in seconds helping him to sit up a little straighter and supporting the older man until the fit passed. There was blood, but not too much. For a long time Arte lay against him, breathing heavily, his face tightly clenched against the pain that came at him with every move.

When his muscles finally began to relax Jim thought that he had passed out again, but was surprised to find brown eyes looking up at him.

Jim tried to put a reassuring smile on his face as he resettled his partner against the pillows.

"Arte...do you uh...think you could drink some of the soup?"

Gordon closed his eyes in response, and Jim was ready to take that as a 'no' when Arte swallowed, and cleared his throat. "Did you make it?" He asked, his voice hoarse.

Jim smirked, and laughed as he bent to the pot that had been warming by the stove all evening. He ladled some soup into a cup then went back to the settee. "No, Arte. This is what's left of the stuff you made."

"Love some. Thank you." Was Arte's immediate response and Jim tilted the cup to his partner's lips giving him a little at a time, careful not to drown him. When Arte pulled away to swallow Jim waited, wanting to share his plan with his partner but knowing that it would only brook an argument that Arte couldn't afford.

The second sip went just as well as the first and Jim waited as Arte rested, pondering how a sip of soup became a major victory in a situation like theirs. He thought about all the work that Arte had done in the first few days of their predicament. The hours that his partner had spent, working without complaint, and without any hope of help or rescue, to dig through the drifts that threatened their lives. To the point that he wore his hands almost literally to the bone.

Half the cup of broth was gone before Arte passed out again, thankfully after swallowing what he had in his mouth. The man seemed more at peace this time, and Jim covered him again with the blankets.

He'd considered giving him a taste, literally, of his own medicine, and slipping sleeping powder into the drink, but had remembered something about the powder suppressing a man's breathing and considered that, under the circumstances, it needed to be a last resort.

Jim went back to work, eating as he did, and knowing in the back of his mind that he would have to get some rest as well if his plan was going to work at all.

Morning came too soon, and, with it, the storm that had been threatening. They were out of time if the snow, that had begun to fall at dawn, was going to be anything like what had fallen a few days before.

Without the sleep he had hoped to get, Jim prepared the one man sled that he had spent the night constructing, packing essentials on board. Using the wood from their sleeping berths, and some of the paneling from the walls, Jim had constructed a box like frame large enough to carry Arte and their supplies. For runners he had used the side rails of the step-ladder, sanding them smooth and covering them liberally with candle wax. They would give the boxy structure a little elevation, and weighing down the back would keep the sled hopefully from getting bogged down in the snow.

There was a harness of sorts on the front that would allow him some control over the sled's speed and direction, and he had devised a brake using some wire from Arte's laboratory and the decorative, brass corner fittings that had once been molded to the desk.

He put both mattresses from their berths on the bottom of the sled along with every pillow he could find, packed the supplies as securely as possible around the spot where Arte would lay, and waited until he had melted an entire pot of snow and poured the water into several canteens, before he woke his partner.

"Morning?"

"Yeah it's morning, Arte. We're checking out."

Arte immediately groaned in protest, but was able to sit up with Jim's help and withstood the process of being forced into a second coat.

"Someone going to...get our bags?" Arte asked when Jim draped a heavy cloak around the man's shoulders.

"No room service at this hotel, buddy."

"Dreadful..." Was Arte's disgusted reply.

Finally Jim sighed and said, "This is the hard part..."

Arte swallowed and gave his partner a pained look through one partially opened eye. "I have to move...don't I?"

Jim nodded apologetically.

"On four?" Arte suggested.

Jim got under Arte's right arm and nodded, then said, "One..." And forced his partner to his feet. He said nothing else until he managed to get Arte down the hall, off the platform and onto the snow, then onto the mattresses and pillows. The fierce concentration on Arte's face, gilded by a pale tinge, and pained grunts that accompanied every step, had not welcomed conversation.

As soon as Arte was prone and lying so that the pressure was off his ribs, he passed out again.

Jim covered his partner, head to foot, rechecked the supplies, then set out as the light snow fall became a little more steady. The flakes just a little bigger than before.

* * *

The sled moved easily over the snow so long as it was hard packed. Jim began to grow accustomed to what the firmer snow looked like and was able to steer the heavy box away from the weak or melting drifts. The air was considerably warmer than he thought it would be and the snow was light enough for the first few hours.

Jim stuck to the flat rail bed.

Beyond where the avalanche had buried the varnish car the snow wasn't much deeper than a foot, and in some places no more than a few inches. So long as he had snow under the runners the going was relatively easy, the first time they clattered off the snow and onto tile and ballast, the whole sled rocked harshly and Arte woke with a pained grunt.

It was well past noon and Jim had begun to feel cold despite the exertion and decided they would stop. The tracks were in a gully with the mountain rising on one side, and a rounded hill-top about ten feet high on the other. With no available wood, even wet wood that he could start burning with the kerosene he had packed, Jim resolved himself to a cold meal and ate some of the biscuits and jerky.

"Jim..."

"Arte, hey, here drink some of this-"

Jim quickly produced one of the canteens of water and tilted it to his partner's lips, helping the man through three good swallows before he started to cough. Thankfully the fit didn't last long. Jim expected Gordon to fall back to sleep but was surprised to hear his name again.

"How long has it been?"

"Only a few hours-"

"No, no..." Arte shook his head, freeing a hand from the piles of blankets to grasp his partner's forearm. "Since the avalanche..."

Jim shrugged, thinking he was the wrong person to ask. He'd been unconscious for half the time. "Days, Arte, I don't-"

But Arte nodded. "That's right, days. And this...is the only railroad between...Holloway and Saguache."

Jim looked up the mountainside at the obvious trail they'd been leaving, then realized where his partner was going. "Why hasn't another train come along?"

Arte nodded, his hand relaxing its grip.

"The storm is probably just as bad in Saguache-"

But Arte shook his head, and his grip tightened again, this time in reaction to a spasm of pain that he weathered before he said, "Orrin."

Jim nodded, understanding, and not liking the new worries crowding in on the old ones. As he tucked Arte's hand back under the blanket and stowed the supplies, he considered the possibilities. They still didn't know why or how the engine, hopper and baggage cars became detached. Assuming that the separation was the result of a hijacking, Orrin may have been injured, or worse. Why else would he not have tried to contact them, or organized a rescue party?

For that matter, how bad were things in Saguache that no one had made an attempt to use the tracks, or venture out to see what was taking the Secret Agents so long to deliver four prisoners.

By the time the sun fell that evening Jim had no answers to his questions, but at the very least he had shelter and warmth.

He had packed a canvas tent in with the other supplies and after finding sticks that would support the ridge of the tent, and burying the edges of the canvas under rocks and snow for want of tent stakes he was able to completely cover the sled, leaving enough room for him to sleep on some cut pine boughs. The fire came second. With the help of some kerosene soaked green wood, the last of the dry wood from The Wanderer, and fuel that he collected and let dry around the rim of the fire, he was able to get a reasonable blaze going.

Once he had coals enough he heated the last of their soup, waking Arte at the last-minute to spoon feed the broth to him. Two or three mouthfuls in and Arte woke up a bit more and stopped Jim, taking over the task for himself. They each ate biscuits and Jim gnawed on the salted and dried beef til his jaws ached, still impossibly hungry.

The Wanderer hadn't been well stocked to begin with before they left Holloway. Jim was already making a list of the emergency food rations he wanted on board The Wanderer at all times from there on.

If they survived, and if the snow melted, and if...well if a lot of things.

Around midnight the snow started to fall in earnest and the winds picked up. The canvas was soon covered in snow and their fire at risk of blowing out. Each time the boughs of the pines around them moaned against the force of the winter gale, Jim woke, afraid that the snow piling on the branches above them would fall and smother the flames. By three he had only managed a few hours, and decided that he wasn't going to get anymore. Packing what remained of their unused firewood, Jim took down the tent, tied the canvas over his partner's sleeping form, then started out through the new drifts.

He judged he made five miles by sun up.

Dawn was nothing more than a lighter gray coming into the sky, before the light was all but blotted out again by the storm. The snow swirled and banked, sticking to everything and only ever lessening when Jim ducked against the mountainside. It might have been the cold, or the unending whine of the storm, but Jim had begun to feel the paranoia of a man being followed, yet every glance over his shoulder yielded only empty sled tracks and more snow sneaking through the break in his scarf and chilling him as it melted down his torso.

The deeper the snow became the more quickly the sled was bogged down. Were it not for the canvas acting as a shield Arte would have been covered in snow by the time Jim was forced to stop mid-morning. When he lifted the canvas Arte was pale, and shivering, and had been coughing more, if the dried blood on his chin was any indication. The shivering had to be agitating the broken ribs, but without a secondary source of heat, Jim knew Arte couldn't produce enough warmth to stop the involuntary action.

They needed a shelter, a permanent shelter from the storm. Until he found it, Jim decided, he wasn't going to stop.

He tucked the blankets tighter around his partner then replaced the canvas and continued on. Ducking his head to his chest and making himself as small as he could to cut down on the wind resistance, Jim felt the energy and the heat draining away, hour by hour.

It soon became something of a loose science in Jim's mind. He saw a reservoir that held every ounce of power remaining. Every time the crust of snow gave way, or the sled was bogged down by the drifts, the power level dropped and wavered until he was able to get free and build up momentum again. Then the power level rose, topping off at a certain point where he was able to maintain forward momentum. But each time it dropped, and rose, the steadying point was lower than the last time.

Jim tried to bump his mental image superficially by reminding himself that he didn't have a choice. That a man's life was in his hands. More than one man. That he and Arte were irreplaceable assets to the United States Government, and that Uncle Sam got cranky when his assets were wasted or destroyed.

If they were so irreplaceable, he argued, where the hell was Uncle Sam now?

The first time Jim fell and couldn't get back up again, he saw the power level drop and stay low, and had to vocally talk himself back to his feet.

As he trudged forward he felt the sled butting against his calves and realized that the gradual incline that had marked each of the sharp curves around the mountain, had proved unnecessary as the track straightened. The gradient was steeper and his legs weren't moving fast enough to keep up with the sled as it was pulled down the hill under its own power. He started to make use of the brake but lost one of the corner pieces almost immediately. The other only made the sled twist hard to the right so Jim stopped using it.

Instead, he shifted, digging his heels in instead of his toes, leaning back against the sled as he labored now only to slow it down. That tactic was, if anything, even more tiring, and his legs were soon locking up each time he dug in a heel.

The second and last time that he fell he knew he wasn't going to be able to stop the sled. The forces of gravity that had been working against him were too powerful. The minute his body no longer acted as resistance the sled tried to take off. Jim did his best to get out of the way, but couldn't move fast enough.

He sank into the snow, wincing at the cold bite of wet against raw and wind chafed skin. His left ankle went under the sled and the weight of the heavily loaded vehicle rushed over him, crushing the bones, and tearing tendons. It felt like his foot had been ripped off entirely but when he lifted his head to glare through the haze of pain his foot was still there, but already beginning to swell.

The sled continued on its course, skewing to the left and right every few feet until it clipped the corner of a boulder lying near the tracks, tipped, then tumbled. Arte was dumped into the snow before the sled and all its contents, rolled over him. The box continued down the mountain, breaking apart every time it hit a new obstacle.

Unable to walk Jim crawled through the snow until he reached Arte. He was still unconscious and there was now a trickle of blood on his forehead above his right eye. He was pale, and sweating, but still breathing. Jim collected as many of the blankets that he could without crawling more than a few feet from his partner, then dragged the unconscious man, the blankets, and his useless foot into the shelter of a boulder that formed a tiny, V-shaped cave against the rocky wall of the trench that had been cut for the railroad.

It was out of the wind, Jim thought, focused on his task, trying not to think about the pain that was burning like fire up his leg. Trying not to think about how bad the injury was, or what it might mean. Backing into the cave Jim didn't stop until he felt the cold wall against his back. He pulled Arte in after him, letting the man lean back against his chest before he covered the both of them with the blankets.

A minute later Arte started to mumble and Jim leaned his head back, breathing hard against the agony in his leg, listening to the fevered nonsense coming from his partner.

Soon he realized it wasn't nonsense. Whatever hallucination, nightmare, or dream Arte was stuck in he was orating, addressing a large group judging by the language he was using.

"Have known him for too few years...gave everything for a cause that was...we gather today to honor the memory...may the lives that he saved be lived in honor...and may he rest in peace."

* * *

Jim never lost consciousness. His ankle had begun to swell and expand, so tight against the walls of his boot that every pulse of his heartbeat sent bolts of pain up his leg and into the pit of his stomach. He was fighting nausea and hunger at the same time, miserable with cold, and feeling Arte grow weaker by the minute.

Gordon's mumbling had stopped long ago. The things he had had to say were surprising to Jim and a little overwhelming. It had seemed that Arte was giving a eulogy, at the funeral of none other than James West, and not as one of his cast of thousands, but as himself.

Heartfelt, emotional, erudite despite the fever, Arte had spoken in nothing but glowing terms of his not-yet-late partner and Jim had been touched. While he struggled to overcome the pain in his leg he had worked on memorizing what Arte had said, intending to use the kind words to his advantage in the future.

He was determined that he and Arte still had a future, and that their lives wouldn't end there.

As the long afternoon dragged into an even longer night, the snow continued to fall, covering the scattered and broken bits of the sled, their precious supplies, and starting to find its way into their meager shelter.

At first Jim thought about moving. About wrapping Arte in every blanket they had and throwing him over one shoulder before bulling his way down the mountain. To that end he tried operating his wounded leg and the first two inches of movement were cut off by a white-hot flame that raced from his ankle to his teeth, stealing his breath and squashing any notion of travel flat.

He wasn't going anywhere on foot.

The rest of his thoughts quickly dwindled into hoping that someone would find them, somehow, rescue them, somehow. What he wouldn't have given for a handful of Chinese fireworks, or a nautical flare, a telegraph, anything...

Then Arte's breathing hitched, a soft, slight change in the pattern that had been lulling Jim into a half-asleep/half-in-agony, state.

"Arte?"

No response, only the hitch, then rasping breaths growing weaker and weaker.

Jim wrestled for a half-a-minute. Whether or not he should wake his partner. The decision was made for him when Arte coughed, moaned and woke himself. He lay for a long moment adjusting to reality, unfortunately worse than when he left it.

"Jim?"

"Yeah, Arte."

Arte breathed for a moment, the sound gurgling in his throat. "S'good try..."

West closed his eyes, smirking tiredly, feeling some of the panic that had been building ebb a little. "I guess gadgets just aren't my specialty."

Arte shook his head, "No...did fine..." There was a pause, and Jim realized it was intentional when Arte mumbled, "Bad driver..."

Jim started to chuckle. It had been building in him for sometime, the need to release the tension somehow. Screaming, kicking, tearing something to shreds...or laughter. Those had been his options, and his mind finally found the out. The chuckle turned into a breathless laugh that jostled his wounded leg and his wounded partner and Jim did his best to quell it as quickly as possible.

Tears were streaming down his cheeks by the time his diaphragm relaxed again, and he was still fighting the urge to giggle when Arte said,

"Was...honor."

The words chilled him, more than the wind and snow, then his partner was limp against him. Jim waited for the shallow breathing to begin again, but it didn't.

He waited for the moist rasp of breath but nothing came.

"Arte.."

He shook the man lightly, already trying to shift out from underneath him. Arte's eyes were open partway, dull brown surrounded by skin unnaturally pale, cheeks ashen under the beard.

Jim tapped his cheeks, rubbed snow into his beard. No response, not a blink, not a sigh. He knew instinctively that Arte was gone yet he kept trying to rouse him.

"Arte..." Nothing, stillness, the snow falling, the night stretching onward...then Arte jerked.

His leg moved, then he shifted, then he was being dragged away from Jim faster than West could react. What had started as a moment of insane hope turned into vile outrage. Arte was being dragged out of the cave by something...a wolf? A scavenger waiting just outside their minimal shelter for one of them to expire? Jim didn't know, and he didn't care.

He grappled for the handle of his gun with stiff fingers, digging through the layers of blanket, coat and cloth until he had the handgun...Arte's gun, in his palm. He gritted his teeth and moved, managing to get to one foot and following the trail of flying snow powder and movement out of the cave.

He couldn't see the animal that was dragging Arte, but could easily see his partner's body and he aimed just above it, firing until he heard the yelp and the bellow. A familiar bellow.

West charged forward, fell the minute he tried to put weight on his injured leg and crawled the rest of the way, forcing a hand under Arte's arm pit, and dragging the man into his lap again, staring at the giant footprints in the snow and the drops of dark blood that had splattered against the white around him.

The beast...the one that had done this to Arte in the first place. The one responsible for-

It had been following them all that time, Jim realized. It had come back.


	4. Chapter 4

The beast was back.

And Jim had managed to wound it...somehow. And the blood was visible.

A huff of breath crystallizing in the air told him a moment later that the beast was still there.

He finally spotted the drops of blood, welling in mid-air then dropping to the snow with an almost inaudible hiss, black against the gray. The grunts were pained.

Jim gritted his teeth to stop them from chattering and snarled, "I hope it hurts. I hope you bleed to death." He wouldn't let go of Arte, he would die before he let his partner into the beast's grasp again. He watched the spot of blood that hovered in the air, watched surprised as the bleeding stopped quickly. The blood was there one moment then gone the next.

All that remained to be seen of the beast, or its wound...his minor victory, were the drops of blood on the ground. Jim watched them, thinking they too might disappear, then searched the air around him, finally spotting a mantle of snow building on an invisible set of shoulders. The creature was still there, standing, staring, and apparently over seven feet tall.

"What do you want?" Jim rasped. "To kill us...?" He swallowed hard, clutching Arte's lifeless form closer. "You already managed that."

The beast didn't retreat, or rather the mantle of snow didn't retreat, but it did shift, as if the beast had tilted its head. Then it lowered, a soft grunting sound greeting Jim's ears. His hand tightened on the gun, but even as he considered inflicting further pain on the creature, he could feel a part of him deciding not to care. Not to care about surviving...this storm, this strange creature, this stupid fiasco...he was so damned tired, so cold. And Arte was...

Arte's head moved, but again it wasn't the man, it was the beast, tilting his head to get at something...the blood, Jim realized. The dried blood from the wound Artemus had received when the sled rolled. Once more Jim felt outrage rushing through him and he brought the gun up only to have it knocked from his grasp by a side swiping blow that numbed his hand. He reached out with the other hand balled into a fist and that strike too was easily deflected.

Once more a hand went to his face, warm, holding his jaw against soft, velvet like leathery skin. Like a mother, calming a child.

Jim could see nothing but the pile of snow a foot below where the head had to be. He imagined eyes that were no doubt once again studying him, as they had atop the rail car.

The warmth that flooded him was overwhelming, for an instant taking the pain along with it. It was so welcoming, Jim didn't jerk away.

Then Arte's body moved yet again, jolted then convulsed and Jim was released. A new cut had been opened on Arte's cheek but as his heart was no longer beating, the cut did not bleed.

Then Jim saw dark liquid beading in the air, like oil in water, inches from Arte's cheek, welling on a rounded surface before it began to drip. Blood splattered over the cut on the still man's face, but Arte didn't flinch. His eyes remained half-open, and frozen in time.

A few moments later, against all logic, science and medicine, one small bead of fresh blood formed at the corner of the cut the beast had made, rolling over the blood of the beast and trailing down Arte's cheek like a tear. A second later, another.

Then Arte moved.

Not his limbs or his chest, not his head, but his eyelids. They closed, on their own.

Then his chest rose and fell. The second intake of oxygen was accompanied by a soft rasp, then an exhale. Arte didn't wake, he didn't move his arms or his legs, but he kept breathing. Jim found his pulse and knew that his partner's heart was beating. The cut on his cheek was bleeding more freely.

He was alive.

Jim felt his chest seize, felt a hundred ice crystals blasting into his lungs as he desperately struggled to breathe. Arte was alive.

He had a damned good reason to try to survive again, but first things were first. He had to stop the cut from blee-

The cut wasn't there anymore, it had closed in a matter of seconds. The blood had dried against his cheek, the trail still visible under the now melting snowflakes, but the origin of the trail was gone.

And Arte was still breathing, ragged, but there.

Jim jerked his head up, squinting against a renewed onslaught of wind and snow and ice, trying to find the mantle of snow again, desperate to voice a question that he was practically screaming in his mind.

He wouldn't remember how long he stared before something fell against his broken ankle and the pain took him out. It would be a timeless hour, frozen like a scene in a painting, a living painting that moved but never changed.

* * *

Arte woke with a start. Something had jolted him out of the bizarre dream and he sat up quickly, searching his surroundings. The small room he had been allotted was still and quiet, only the slightest of summer breezes blowing through the cracked open window. The window had been a luxury, and an even greater luxury was that he had it all to himself.

He pulled his feet out from under the covers and looked at the dingy lace curtains swaying in the breeze, fascinated as always by the way that the wind made them move...like a puppeteer with marionettes. He'd always wanted his own puppet, he thought as he pulled on his robe and moved to the door, no more than four feet away from the bed.

He creaked it open knowing that his mother's room would be on the other side. A room that she shared with three other women. He was supposed to knock any time he opened that door but he knew that at this hour of the morning, all of the women would be sleeping. He peered through the crack just in case.

At seven years old he was young enough that most women were no more than surrogate mothers for him, but he was on the brink of being old enough to start to wonder what else they were meant for.

The bigger room contained two dressers, three chairs and four beds, all of which were occupied. There was Antoinette, younger than his mother, but not prettier, sleeping fitfully in her sheets. There in the corner was Delilah, sleeping flat on her back, with her hair arranged around her head 'so that it couldn't be mussed' and her hands palm down against the coverlet. The fresh paint on her nails was still drying.

The oldest of the women, Yvonne, who was 35, but looked 50, slept quietly on her side. Her eyes always appeared to be half-open. All that the young boy knew at the time was that Yvonne was cagey and paranoid, and given to snapping at him if he ever made the wrong move. Getting out of his own bedroom in the mornings was sometimes an adventure if Yvonne wasn't fast asleep.

But today was a special occasion. Today his mother had told him that he was to wake her once he rose. She had a surprise for him, that he would receive that morning. She had promised to take him somewhere special later in the evening.

Quiet as a mouse the wild haired, brown-eyed boy, crept to his mother's bed and greeted her the way he had been taught. He bowed gallantly, took her wrist and kissed it. The bed-clothes rustled, his mother sighed softly, then turned her head.

Arte was grinning until he saw the black and blue mark under her eye and a similar bruise along her jaw line. Immediately his grin fell, his eyes welled with tears, and the young boy, no older than seven years of age, exactly, kissed his mother's wounded face.

For a long time she held him, whispering that it was alright. That she was fine. It was merely an accident, and the bruises would heal in time. She tried to distract his discomfort by reminding him of the surprise she had for him, and finally, slowly, the anticipation of a rare gift overwhelmed his emotional concern for her.

Sitting up in the bed, with her beautiful boy in her lap, Anise Martino presented her son with one of the two gifts he would receive for his seventh birthday.

The first was a letter. Anise told him, as she always did, that his father had written it, and together they read it. Her son was a truly clever boy and could read most of the words written in English and Italian. He never questioned why his father wrote him in so eclectic a style, or how he knew just the right words. He loved his 'father' and wrote back to him from time to time, and in this way the young mother had managed to give her son a father figure.

After the letter was read, the built-in lesson learned and the rest of the plans of the day briefly discussed, Anise gave her son his special chore for the day.

Each day he was given a job, and it was up to him to complete it before she woke later in the evening. Anise constantly chided herself for not being able to be with her child, as other mothers could. She worked long nights, and slept during most of the day, and couldn't justify keeping her son with her while she worked in a house full of drunkards, brawlers and womanizers. A young boy needed sunlight, and playmates his age, and to, at least on the surface, appear to be normal.

Her special tasks gave him a purpose through the day, so that he was not wandering mindlessly, and he seemed to delight in the challenges.

"Today's task is especially important," She told him, giving him the list that she had made that night while working at the dance hall and tavern. It was torn...a result of the altercation that had landed her the bruises, but the first part of his task would be to piece it back together, and she knew he could easily accomplish it. "It must be done before five o'clock this evening."

The young boy nodded, serious and composed, itching to change out of his night-clothes and to grab the bag that went with him everywhere, a bag that carried all the many tools that he collected over a year of special tasks.

His mother gave him a small handful of coins that he could use to buy his breakfast and lunch. The coins were not actual currency, but tokens that could only be redeemed at the tavern kitchen, and Anise knew that the cook there delighted in feeding the young boy, even at such ill-tempered hours of the day.

With her final blessing, the same as she always gave, Anise kissed her boy on the forehead, squeezing him tightly in a hug that felt that it might break his ribs and his back in two. When she released him he was grinning. All signs of the tears were gone, and he ran to his room to change, and begin the day's adventure.

Arte remembered that day as the first 'grownup' moment of his young life. The first time that he met near disaster and overcame. The first time that he greeted death and came very close to shaking his hand.

His mother never found out about the near meeting. Arte had known that if the extent of the danger had ever been made known to her, his freedom would have been cut off then and there. He had found a way to disguise the incident and hide it from her, and to this day he was certain she never knew.

Why he was reliving that memory, Arte didn't understand. He knew it was his memory, and that he was experiencing it as though he were still a seven-year-old boy, but how?

* * *

When Jim woke he sensed they weren't in the snow anymore. He was laying on hard rock, and the air was still cold but there was no blast of wind, or the pinpricks of snow and ice flashing across his face. His clothes were sodden against him and he felt like he was burning with fever.

When he opened his eyes he could only see blackness. A sudden panic shot through him and he thrust his hands up, afraid he would scream if anything got in his way.

Nothing but air. He wasn't in a box. He wasn't covered, or buried, or sinking to the bottom of the ocean in a glass-windowed coffin.

His fingers were stiff, frost-bitten, but he could feel the sand and rock under his fingertips. A cave, or a tunnel. It had to be, but how had he gotten there? Where was his partner?

He had begun to shiver violently, and was struggling to sit up when he first noticed the light. A tiny, brilliant, crystalline glow that was blinding in its intensity, even if the source was no bigger than a pin prick.

Then the pin began to expand and it didn't take long for the light to overwhelm him.

* * *

Arte felt seven-year-old lungs expand to their fullest as he darted out of the back of the boarding house reading over the mix of Italian, German and English that he was expected to translate. Even after he made the words make sense, the instructions would be written as riddles that he would have to solve before he could do the task.

They were meant to occupy him for a full day, he remembered. He had never thought about it, as a child, the effort that it would have taken his immigrant mother to come up with these special tasks every day. For a year while she worked nights for their room and board, before she had married the first in a long series of husbands, she had struggled with and found a way to occupy an intelligent, inquisitive and cheeky little boy, and would spend every night crafting new challenges for him, while dodging drunken fists, getting slopped with beer and liquor only to clean it off the floor hours later on her hands and knees.

Then the owner of the bar decided that his all female wait staff should also provide themselves as dance partners for those that would pay.

Artemus had known all this as a little boy, but it hadn't occurred to him to wonder when, in all that, his mother had time to come up with his entertainment.

Further where had she found the money to pay for all the things he collected that day?

The first riddle took him to a baker on the East side who provided him with sweet cakes and a tart. He was told that he shouldn't eat any of them, and knowing there was a grander plan to it all Arte for once did as he was told. The riddle had told him to leave the baker not by the front door, but by the back and as he threaded his way through the kitchen he was greeted by the baker's wife who smiled knowingly at him and treated him to an extra sweet cake. This was his reward for following the riddle's instructions, and this cake he was permitted to eat.

Like it was yesterday Arte could feel the sweet butter melting in his mouth, the feathery lightness of the cake, the small piece of candied pear on top that he savored last before he looked to the next riddle.

This one took him to a tobacconist, who upon seeing the young boy, immediately let him sniff the various flavors of pipe tobacco in the store. He was told to pick which one he thought was the best smelling, and when he picked a brand grown in Virginia the tobacconist grinned proudly, and puffed out his chest as he told the boy, in a deep southern drawl, all about the wonders of Virginia. The man's stories were fascinating and exciting and Arte sat spell-bound for an hour watching the proud man speak. The stories danced in his head for days after until he decided that Virginia was one of those places he simply had to see some day.

The third riddle took him to the grandest toy store he had ever before seen. He was in awe, crossing the street without paying the least bit of attention when a racing fire wagon clipped him, the edge of a bucket full of water cracking against the top of his skull.

He was unconscious for no more than a few seconds, and was otherwise uninjured, but had he been one step closer he would have been crushed under the wheels of the heavily loaded wagon.

* * *

When Jim woke the second time he could see the cave. Light; normal everyday sunlight, was coming from a tiny aperture at the top of the arched ceiling, filtering through the smoke. Smoke that came from a fire. A fire that had been laid six feet away from him, burning low but putting off enough heat to push back the chill of the air outside.

Jim sat up, carefully doing so without jostling his broken ankle too much. When he got a good look at it he admired the splint made of broken sticks, leather ties and part of a blanket.

The ties looked familiar, the knots even more familiar, and by the time he recognized the blanket the voice he was expecting to hear came to his ears sardonically. "The next time you try flying son, you might consider leaping off a lower roof. You nearly scared your mother to death."

As soon as he snapped his head toward the source of the sound the cave was gone. He was in his room and his broken leg was swathed in bandages, elevated painfully and almost twenty years younger. His father, living and breathing, and grinning like a son of a bitch, sat on Jim's younger brother's bed, shaking his head at his oldest son's antics.

"She saw you go flying off the roof of that barn, flapping your arms like you thought you'd take flight..." Instantly his father was breathless with laughter and Jim felt himself grinning, even as tears sprang to his eyes, delighting in the opportunity to once more laugh with his father. A man who had died when Jim was in his teens. Yet there he was, bigger than life. A man of laughter and hard work, grand tales and down to earth Gospel honesty. There'd never been another man quite like him.

"What are you crying for son?" Jonathan West asked, then stood, sudden concern written on his face. "Maybe you did hit your head a little harder than I thought."

Jim shook his head, fighting the smile and the tears and the wash of emotions that his childhood body couldn't handle. How old had he been when he flew off the barn roof? 8? 9?

The broken leg had been the least of the problem, he remembered. The head injury had been the major issue and his parents had despaired for his life until he woke up. As soon as his eyes were open though, there was his Dad, cracking wise, and acting as though he hadn't spent the past eight hours praying desperately for God to spare his son and take him instead.

It had been his first brush with the reality of death, and long after the incident he had a conversation with his father about it. The conversation had taken place a week before his father drowned.

* * *

There was pain, in his chest and his back, but it was dull, and further muted by the itching of healing skin. For a moment he couldn't remember how he'd gotten injured, or where he was, or whether or not he was in danger. The not knowing was worse than the pain and Arte struggled to open his eyes, fighting against the web of deception that had bound him to a memory of his childhood as if time were nothing more than a handful of string to be manipulated.

But it was a memory. Memories were in the mind, and somewhere out there was a badly hurting body that needed Arte's full attention.

When reality finally did slam into place Arte jerked a breath into tortured lungs, expecting the action to burn all the way through. When the organs responded with relative ease he opened his eyes, hoping to find angels, or nurses, instead of demons.

He was greeted with a rock wall, the glow of a fire and the face of the engineer of The Wanderer, hovering concerned over him.

Arte's mouth opened but he had to chew on his confusion for a moment before he managed to ask, "Orrin?"

A relieved smile popped onto the older man's face and he quickly produced a canteen, lifting the injured man's head so that he could drink without drowning.

"Where did you come from?" Was Arte's next, rasping question.

The older man grinned and shook his head, gesturing at the cave with a shrug. "I don't know. John and I woke up here. Both of us thought sure we'd been killed dead, but here we are."

"Well...where is here?" Arte started to cough, his voice cracking, and Orrin dutifully helped him take another sip of water.

"Dunno, Mr. Gordon." Orrin self-consciously scrubbed at the back of his neck, looking around the cave with a flush before he admitted, "Don't rightly know how we got here. Or how you and Mr. West got here...but John an' me-"

"It was the beast." James said, his voice ringing clearly through the open space. The way Orrin reacted, Arte got the impression that Jim had been unconscious or asleep until that moment too.

Arte turned his head to see his partner lying on the other side of the fire, propped on his elbows, one of his feet tightly trussed in a makeshift splint.

"The beast?" Arte asked, then laid a hand against the left side of his chest and gently pressed his fingers against the bruises. The pain was still there, but it wasn't coming from a swollen and pierced lung, or broken bones. Cracked maybe, and bruised, but not nearly as bad as before.

"The thing that threw you off the roof of the varnish car."

"Threw you off the...what were you doing on the roof of the-" Orrin interrupted, sputtering uncertainly.

"Hold on, what happened to you and John?" Arte asked, bewildered.

"We woke up here...we-"

"No before that...after the avalanche."

Orrin flushed again, then began to fidget, looking to his fireman for a few answers that the man refused to give. "We uh...the train was hijacked."

"How could they have gotten the train past the giant mountain of snow?" Jim asked from across the way, causing Orrin to stutter all the more until he admitted,

"Dynamite."

"Dynamite!?" Both Jim and Arte demanded.

"And who told the dangerous criminals where the dynamite was?" Jim charged, his irritation filtered through gritted teeth.

Orrin couldn't respond, instead moving his lips like a fish until he finally blurted. "I'm sorry, Mr. West. You were injured, and it looked real bad, and I knew we needed to get off the mountain and into Saguache quicker'n a jack rabbit and when one of the prisoners said dynamite would work, and we figured on just how the blast should go-"

"Oh...allow me, you then released said prisoner and gave _him _the dynamite." Arte said.

"He was supervised the whole time." Orrin insisted.

"And the other three?" Jim asked.

"John was watching them."

The up-till-then silent fireman cleared his throat in a straight forward objection and Orrin sighed. "John was stoking the engine."

"Alright, alright..." Arte finally lifted a hand, stopping the blame game belatedly. "What happened after they set off the dynamite?"

"I don't know."

Both Gordon and West waited, biting back the knee-jerk responses, and allowing the man to respond on his own.

"The one fella, he...tried to crush me to death...and they shot John before they set it off. Like I said...I thought for sure we were dead and then we-"

"Woke up here." Arte and Jim said together again.

Both Orrin and John were nodding now and Orrin put a hand to his chest. "It sure hurt when we woke up but, we've been getting better real steady ever since then."

"Getting better from being dead." Arte mumbled in a tone that implied that he was agreeing with crazy people.

"Don't knock it when you've tried it, Arte." Jim said, his voice again flat, irritated and calculating. When his partner gave him a confused look Jim quietly informed him. "You died out there. Stopped breathing. You're not dead now and it has everything to do with that beast."

Arte gritted his teeth and a moment later he was rising into a sitting position with Orrin's help. The move might have been premature but Arte felt as if he'd been lying down for a month and his muscles had begun to scream for a better position.

He didn't remember the injury that had prompted the splint on James' ankle and scratched absently at his cheek where he could feel the slightly raised bump that indicated fresh scar tissue. He didn't remember that either.

"Have the two of you been alone all this time?" Arte asked finally, clearing his throat when his voice caught and taking his own sip from the canteen.

Orrin and John exchanged a lengthy glance before Orrin coughed softly and said, "Well not entirely alone, you see there's this..." He trailed off, trying to find a way to describe something that was like nothing else he'd ever known, but West interrupted him.

"Neither of you looked for a way out? What about food and water?" Jim asked next, searching the perimeter of the room, or at least trying to. For the most part the recesses of the cave were so deeply hidden in shadow that the actual diameter of the room couldn't be determined.

"We've only been here a few minutes-" Orrin began. The startled look he was given caused him to trail off.

"It's been days." Jim began.

"Almost a week." Arte added.

All of them fell into silence when a soft grunt sounded, bouncing off the walls of the cave. Their silence was so complete that they could hear the foot falls, hardened skin scraping against stone and dirt, small pebbles unsettling as the creature traveled closer.

Both Arte and Jim automatically reached for weapons that they didn't have, and as they came to that realization a voice sounded.

Loud, feminine, ringing in their ears but emanating from their minds. Loud enough to cause instant pain, as if a finger were jabbing into their brains.

"YOU WILL NOT HARM I." The voice declared and instantly all four men were cringing, clamping their hands uselessly over their ears.

Through slitted eyes Jim tried to find the source of the voice but the beast, if it, no 'she' was with them, was not visible.

"YOU HAVE TAKEN FROM I." The voice accused."I HAVE RETURNED WHAT IS YOURS. RETURN WHAT IS MINE."

The onslaught of the words had left his ears ringing, his head pounding and he was suddenly sweating. Jim glanced over to his partner to see him similarly afflicted. "You alright, Arte?"

"No." Arte groaned, pressing his palms against his head, certain that his ears were bleeding, and yet faintly aware that it wasn't his ears that had been assaulted. "I assume that was our...beast?"

"She's uh..." Jim paused, sitting up and feeling a wave of dizziness rise up with him. It felt as if his skull had been invaded, the mental barriers torn asunder, the landscape of his mind ravaged by an enemy that didn't know its strength.

"Loud." Orrin provided and John nodded in agreement.

"We gotta get outta here." Jim said.

"I'm with you, Pal." Arte agreed, and both men made the effort to stand.

Just as Arte had discovered that his ribs were slowly but surely healing, Jim found that he could not only get to his feet, but actually put weight on what should have been a gruesome break. It still hurt, but with a dull sort of ache, as if he'd had several weeks to heal.

As Jim moved John walked over to steady him. Orrin stood just behind Arte in case he wavered, and West led the way toward one of the darkened corners, walking until they were engulfed in the black.

"How big is this cave?" Arte asked, searching his pockets for matches that he knew he didn't have. His question echoed back at him.

"Bigger than we thought." Jim muttered.

Together they headed back to the light of the fire, Jim skirting along the perimeter of its illumination then picking a new direction and disappearing into the black again. Before he returned the voice sounded.

"YOU WILL NOT LOCATE AN EGRESS."

Unprepared for it Arte shouted as the invading spike of sound pressed into his mind, and ventured blindly into the darkness after his partner, clamping his hand down on Jim's arched shoulder just as the voice spoke again.

"RETURN TO I WHAT IS MINE."

"We haven't got anything of yours." Arte shouted through clamped teeth, and was blessed with a silence that allowed him to guide Jim back toward the light.

"Maybe there isn't a way out." Orrin offered, whispering.

Arte wasn't sure if Orrin's tone was the result of the headache or in hopes that the creature wouldn't hear them.

"There was a way in, there has to be a way out." Jim responded, then looked to the ceiling, and the hole he remembered, providing an avenue of escape for the smoke. If he had a rope, he thought, the hole might just be big enough.

"MY OFFSPRING WAS TAKEN FROM I."

"Jim, it heard me."

"Yeah."

"Offspring?" Arte's eyes widened. "There are more?"

"WE ARE MANY. BUT FEW."

"Makes perfect sense." Arte said through a wince, then he thought of something and took a deep breath. If the creature understood them, and they could understand it...

"You voice is causing us pain." He called.

"IT IS UNINTENDED."

The four men looked at each other, startled. This time they had heard the voice but the raging invasion of their minds had not followed.

"Thank God for that." Jim muttered. "Who are you?"

"YOU HAVE TAKEN OFFSPRING."

"One track mind." Jim looked to Arte.

"You are not visible to us." Gordon projected his voice into the depths of the cave and waited.

There was a pause, then, "YOUR EYES WILL NOT SEE I."

"How, then, could we have taken your offspring?" Jim asked, catching on.

"MY OFFSPRING HAS NOT REACHED MATURITY, AND CAN BE SEEN." The beast responded and Jim got the distinct feeling that she was getting impatiently irritated with them.

"Arte..." Jim offered, "Your turn."

Artemus shrugged his shoulders, raising his hands at a loss for words before he asked,"What does your offspring look like?"

The response was swift and silent this time, a broad force impacted Arte's chest. It felt like a log had been swung at him from a great height, the power of the blow lifting him off his feet and tossing him closer to the fire where he hit the floor hard and rolled.

"RETURN OFFSPRING, RETURN TO I"

"Arte! Damn it...who ever, or whatever you are, you're going to kill us if you keep this up, and then who will find your offspring?"

"Mr. Gordon?"

Orrin was hovering over him again, his ribs hurt...again. Arte groaned and Orrin helped him stand.

"I WILL NOT PERMIT DEATH."

"We didn't take your offspring." Arte hissed.

"NO. NOT YOU. BUT ONE AMONG YOU."

"What can we possibly do here? We don't know what your child looks like. We aren't the ones that took him, her, it."

"THEN IT WAS ANOTHER."

"Another what!?"

"THEY WERE BOUND."

"The prisoners?" Orrin asked.

"We don't even know where they are." Jim said.

Again the response was quick, the beast's invisibility providing no warning. West felt the tendon of a giant hand closing around his throat, pulling him off his feet. He threw his hands up in defense, finding the tough leathery palm of the creature, and what felt like fur on the back of the creature's hand. Then a fur covered wrist and forearm, larger than any human's. Even such giants as Voltaire.

Blood was rushing to his head, pounding away at the headache, his air flow restricted but not cut off. He could still feel the ground scraping under the very tips of the toe of his boots and clawed desperately at the hand holding him.

"TELL I OF OFFSPRING."

"I cnt...I-ck."

"He can't tell you if he can't breathe!" Gordon shouted.

The beast's grip only tightened and Arte thought he heard a desperate sob. He was watching his partner's face close enough to know that the sob hadn't come from him.

This was a grieving mother, he realized, who was desperate to find her child, and nothing else.

"You told us you would not permit death. I will not permit your offspring to die either. We will do everything in our power to find your child and return it to you but we can't do it from here." Arte protested.

A second later Jim's struggles lessened a little, the panic in his eyes dimming as he was able to take a more significant breath. Then he was released and Arte rushed forward to keep him from hitting the ground. But Jim was too full of spit and vinegar to fall and lunged forward, toward the place where the beast had been seconds ago, growling angrily. John stopped him.

"Jim! Don't get between a she-bear and her cub..." Arte warned.

Eventually the words sank in and West calmed himself, rubbing at the bruises that were forming on his neck.

"How do we leave here?" Arte asked the air, quickly, hoping to forestall any more violence.

"I WILL SEND YOU."

"Send us where? We need-" Arte was cut off by a flash of blinding white light, and a crash of sound not unlike being underneath an ocean wave. When the wave died and the light dimmed he found himself standing in the town of Saguache, on a slanting piece of land known as Mear's Town, in a foot of snow that had collected in front of the General Store. "-supplies." Arte finished, then looked around to find Jim, Orrin and John standing there with him. "How did-"

A voice behind them shouted, "I don't believe it!"

All four men turned to stare at the lean sheriff standing in the doorway to the Saguache jail, spitting tobacco into the snow.

"Wyatt, git on out here and feast yer eyes, son." The man called and a second later a deputy was peering over his shoulder.

"That's West and Gordon!" The young man squeaked, and the Sheriff nodded, his face splitting into a wide grin.

"You bet your sweet Aunt Fanny it's West and Gordon. Risen from the dead and standin' on our doorstep."

Sheriff Bill Bowdeen stepped down into the foot of snow and carefully traveled down to where the four men stood, looking just as bewildered as Bill felt. They shook hands, Bowdeen looking each man over as if they were a peculiar new kind of art in a museum display.

"I shore thought I'd never see you boys alive."

Arte wasn't sure how to respond and looked to his partner, blinking in surprise when the full beard and mustache on the man's face finally registered. Orrin and John, for that matter, were also sporting long beards and their clothes looked like they had been worn for ages without repair.

"You all look like a bunch of Rumplestiltskins." Deputy Wyatt Sumner said as he joined them, offering his own hand around.

"It's...it's been quite the ordeal..." Arte finally managed, wincing as his voice cracked, sounding as though he hadn't used it in a month.

"Hell...that's an understatement." Bowdeen said, before he gestured that the four men should follow him back to the jail. "You fellas been gone and figured dead for five weeks now."


	5. Chapter 5

"Five weeks!?" Jim squeaked, then winced, his hand flying to his abused throat. At first he could still feel the bruises developing from the beast's powerful hand, then the heat went away and he could only feel the pain of ill-used vocal chords, suddenly ordered into action.

"We certainly look like we've been gone five weeks." Arte mentioned quietly, pointing at Jim's beard, the moth-eaten look of their clothes, the ash-pale color of their faces and hands.

The looks Bowdeen and Sumner were giving them weren't terribly comforting, and clearly it wasn't a practical joke pre-arranged by the Sheriff.

The wind blew and Arte shivered, the rest of them slowly becoming aware of how cold it was out on the streets of Mears' Town, and how warm it had been in that cave. A cave that Arte was starting to think they shouldn't bother to mention.

"You fella's best get on in the hotel there. I'll see to it that Siobhan gets a good meal on quick, maybe heat up some baths for ya, find some...new clothes." The more he spoke, listing the things he could clearly see the men needed, the more Sheriff Bowdeen couldn't believe what his eyes were telling him.

Five weeks ago they had been expecting The Wanderer to come rolling into town with two Secret Service Agents and four prisoners aboard. When there was no train, then the reports of an avalanche or two started to trip over the wires, an effort was made to get up the pass, but it proved too dangerous. Several days of cold temperatures, record snow fall and increasingly dangerous slide conditions followed. Each day with a little less hope for the men who had to have been trapped by the snow.

When the skies finally cleared, almost five days after The Wanderer was supposed to arrive, and the temperature rose enough to allow a Mallet with a snow plow to head up the mountain, Bill Bowdeen, Wyatt Sumner and four other men from the town went up with Doc Young in hopes of rescuing someone or something.

"We found the engine first." Bowdeen explained, pausing when the engineer, who had been up to that point reclining lazily under the weight of a blanket, suddenly stiffened in the chair and bolted upright. "It de-railed, only just a little." He said with a placating gesture. "Some of the men were able to set up a frog and get it back on the line, but the boiler was stone cold and there wasn't a lick of wood or coal in the hopper."

"What about the horses? The prisoners?" Arte asked. With his shirt off he was withstanding the examination that Doc Young had insisted on. Sadly Young's two beautiful wives had not joined him, both apparently too pregnant to be out in the cold weather. The bruises on Arte's side and back were gone, all the other wounds that he had sustained, had healed thoroughly. All that remained was the stiffness in the muscles, and the occasional creak when the cold seeped past the blanket he was finally permitted to wrap around his shoulders.

"The equine car was empty. I noticed them cells you fellas put in took a little damage. It looked as if yer prisoners stayed in the equine car as long as they could, till the engine run outta fuel. Then they took the horses and headed off." Bowdeen explained, watching as Young moved on to the splint that was still wrapped around West's foot.

"There were tracks?" Jim asked, before he jumped. The break still felt sore, his ankle tender, the tendons stiffer than he liked and Young's prying fingers weren't helping any.

"Some, most of 'em had been covered over by snow. I sent Sumner with a couple of men on horseback to follow 'em but..." Bowdeen shook his head, then spat tobacco at a spittoon that Siobhan had set down right by his feet when the group came in. The spittle hit with a satisfactory "tang".

"We followed those tracks for almost two days before the weather turned bad again and we had to head back. They had at least two day's head start on us." Sumner offered, fixated on the story book appearance of the four ragged men. It was as if they had stepped out of time. He'd never seen clothes so tattered, or beards so unkempt, on still living bodies...even in a mining town.

"But there were no...big...footprints?" Arte asked, intently, knowing the question wasn't going to help the general opinion of their sanity at the moment.

Bowdeen was about to respond sarcastically to the question, until he realized that two of the four men before him were waiting, tense, for his answer. "You fellas are serious-big prints, ya say?" Bowdeen made a show of scratching his head under his hat, then looked at his deputy.

Sumner gave him a helpless look and shook his head. "No big prints."

"Huh.." Arte and Jim said at the same time, lost in the unexpected disappointment.

Doctor Young had pronounced Jim's leg to be healing well enough and was moving on to check over Orrin when Siobhan, the forever gingham clad lady cook who did just about everything needed at the Mears' Town Hotel, came into the room with a basin, towel, mirror and a coffee pot full of hot water. These she set on the table along with a pair of shears, straight razor and barber's strop pulled from the voluminous pockets of her apron. She smiled stiffly at the men in the room then left without a word.

Arte immediately gravitated toward the bowl, picked up the mirror and the scissors and began snipping away at the thick beard.

"Anyway..." Bowdeen finally picked up the story. "Right about when the weather was hittin' and Sumner was turnin' back to Saguache, the rest of the boys and I found the remains of that...crate thing, all shattered and crushed along the pass. There was a little blood there, and we seen where somethin' had been dragged out of a shelter and...uh. We sure lost hope then. Would'a gone further but the snow come, and-"

"You did everything you could, Bill. We understand." Jim reassured the man, watching as Siobhan returned, this time with a tray of sandwiches, hot cider and a large cauldron shaped serving dish filled with soup. This she placed on the dining table fifteen feet away from where the men had been sitting, in what passed for a lobby in the small hotel/restaurant. She disappeared into the kitchen again, returning with stacks of plates, bowls, cups and cutlery, setting them around the table with practiced precision.

Bowdeen scratched at his own beard, watching Arte hack away at his. "I sure don't. Understand, I mean. How did you fellas..." Bowdeen trailed off when Jim and Arte gave him a guarded look. "Well...I s'pose that can wait til after you boys've eaten and slept some."

The bizarre appeared to be something that Artemus Gordon and James West, in particular, dealt with on a regular basis and after working with the two men some months prior, Bowdeen had learned that if the answers weren't forthcoming, they probably weren't something he really wanted to know. He also knew them to be men of great discretion, and wasn't about to push them to break that habit for the sake of his own curiosity.

Each of the men shaved then went to eat while Sheriff Bowdeen and Deputy Sumner got them caught up on what the past five weeks had been for the rest of the world. When they were told that Washington had begun to consider listing them as Agents Presumed Dead, Arte, who finished eating first, excused himself and went in search of the telegraph office, sending a message in code to the Los Pinos Indian Agency. Knowing that the officer in charge there would recognize the code name and pass it on to Washington through more official channels.

When he returned, a bath was waiting in one of the rooms on the second floor and Arte finally rid himself of the clothing he had apparently been wearing for a month, surprised that the articles weren't able to stand on their own. He was even more surprised at how his body had changed.

It had only been a week, his mind insisted. A hard week, but still only a week, and yet he had to have lost thirty or more pounds. Like a man just leaving the hospital after a long stay from which he hadn't expected to recover.

Sinking into the luxuriously hot water, Arte closed his eyes and felt himself start to drift.

_The cave. Arte opened his eyes and saw the rock wall and the fire and he could feel the heaviness in his side caused by still healing bruises. He turned his head and saw Jim laying on the other side of the fire. His leg in the splint, asleep...but it looked as if he was barely breathing. Arte lifted his head, groaned at the wash of pain that swept from his head to his chest and on down. There was Orrin, asleep. John, asleep. _

_He pushed at the dirt and gravel beneath his hands, trying to rise up further but something stopped him. Then there was a voice telling him to wake up. _

_"Wake up." _

"Hey, Arte, wake up!"

Water splashed and sloshed and Arte slapped his arms out, catching the edge of the tub. He hadn't been in any real danger of drowning but the insistence in his partner's voice had alarmed him enough that he might have drowned anyway. Wiping soap suds from suddenly burning eyes Arte glared at the younger man who was grinning at him with a collection of towels and clothing in his hands. "What!?" Arte demanded, irritated.

"There's only one tub and you're hogging all the hot water."

It was then that Arte noticed Orrin and John sitting in the hallway, also waiting to bathe.

"Oh. I'll be right out." He said, feeling a little chagrined, if not outright disoriented by the odd dream. A dream that was just as vivid and real as the dream about his mother had been. Cleaning himself quickly, Arte stepped out of the water and toweled off before he donned the clean pants that had been provided, collecting the rest of the clothing and leaving the room so that the others could bathe.

Dressing in the hallway he was told by Orrin and John that he and Jim would be sharing a room just down the hall, the two train men would be opposite. They had been told that dinner would be at six that evening and it had been suggested by both Doc Young and Sheriff Bowdeen that they get some rest until then.

At first Arte was certain he wouldn't sleep, and lay in the bed awake until well after Jim had returned and drifted off. Running over the dream in his mind. Over what he thought had been a week, but really was a month.

When he finally did sleep the sun had already begun to set over the mountain town.

* * *

"Come on, throw the ball!"

"He ain't gonna run, just throw it!"

"Throw the ball, Jimmy!"

"Throw the-"

Tightly wound string and rawhide whistled through the air, smacking into the summer hardened palm of a twelve-year-old, who then threw the large ball as hard as he could to the 13-year-old, who tapped the ball against the runner who had left the first post before the pitch.

"You're out, Billy! I told ya not to run it!" Jimmy West called, cocky and grinning from the bowler's mound, reaching out his hand in anticipation of the return of the ball. Before it got to him Billy Wheeler, a boy Jimmy's age, but nowhere near his physical prowess, gave a hard growl and charged across the field, throwing his shoulder into the boy and tossing him to the ground. Both were on the cusp of turning thirteen and had, from the age of ten, decided they were the fiercest of rivals. They always went after the same girls, competed in the same games, bested one another to pull the worst prank in school.

Any excuse for a fight, any at all, and both boys were game. The only problem was that Jimmy, living with two older brothers and a father who had been a lightweight champion, had actually begun to learn how to defend himself. Billy, with one sister and no father figure to speak of, scrapped when he fought.

The mix of dirty fighting and physical ability made for one hell of a school yard brawl. More and more, however, Jimmy was coming out on top lately. That day Billy simply snapped.

As soon as Jimmy West was on the ground Billy was rubbing dirt in his mouth and eyes, clawing with uncut nails and doing his utmost to grind the other boy into dust. Jimmy was giving back as good as he got, but the sheer ferocity of Billy's attack had surprised him. Billy Wheeler had never been this mad before. Somewhere in the back of his frantic, testosterone and adrenaline soaked brain, Jimmy started to think that the rumors about Billy's mother were true.

For reasons that only immature and testosterone fueled almost thirteen year old boys understand, Jimmy thought that in the midst of the scrap he should make a comment about Billy's mother.

If Jimmy had thought that Billy was mad before, he was hell itself on a rampage now. One of the other boys, noting the sudden change in the savagery of the attack, tried to step in and was bit in the hand, deep enough to draw blood, for his efforts.

When the two scrappers finally separated, out of breath, covered in dirt and blood, they eyed each other. It wasn't a game for Billy any more, Jim realized. It wasn't just about boys being boys, and ribbing one another just to see what the other would do. Something deep down had broken in Billy and Jim was stuck at an impasse.

He could hear his father's voice in the back of his mind, teaching him about boxing. That it wasn't just about fists, and strength, and speed. That boxing started in the mind. That a good boxer didn't train himself to blindly hate, but to clearly think. To watch what the opponent did, how he feinted and why, what he protected, what he exposed. To get into the head of the other boxer, that was the way to defeat him. That was the way to be reigning champion.

Jimmy took a deep breath and straightened his back and lowered his hands. The noise of boys chanting and egging on the fighters died as his fists fell and Billy stared at him stunned, still huffing angrily.

"Well ain't ya gonna fight?" Billy asked, sneering, his teeth pink with the blood from a split lip.

"Nah..." Jim said, after a moment. "Ain't worth it."

Billy was tired, Jim could see it. The anger had worn him out faster than the exertion had, and as the anger left him, so did the fight. "You gonna take it back?" Billy demanded.

Jimmy could hear the other boys whispering, making comments. Most of all he could feel every one of them watching him, waiting. Jim shrugged his shoulders, relaxing completely before he rubbed the dirt away from his sweating forehead and said, "Sure." Then he spit in his palm and held it out to Billy.

After a handful of wary glances Billy did the same, slapping his spit and blood stained palm into Jim's. The boys shook, the beginning of a truce sealed before one of the other boys shouted, "Hey, let's play ball!"

The game resumed. The fledgling truce developed into a friendship that followed Bill Wheeler and Jim West through their teen years and into the Army, then into the War Between the States and to a place called Manassas.

A place where Billy and Jim got into a tussle with a group of Confederates who had mistakenly, drunkenly, crossed their picket line. Two men had died that night. One Johnny Reb and one Billy Yank. Bill had died saving Jim's life.

* * *

James West woke bathed in sweat, fighting the blanket into submission, certain that he heard an echo of a voice screaming in the silence that greeted him. The echo had sounded like it was bouncing off of stone walls, but he was in the darkened hotel room, alone.

Arte's bed had been made and left empty. And the longer he lay, breathing, the softer the roar in his ears became and he could make out the voices of Orrin, Arte and others below. The clink of silverware on china.

Billy. He hadn't thought about Billy Wheeler in ages. He'd died at the very beginning of the war, before it was even considered a war. Back when they'd been certain that the Rebs were nothing more than farm boys that could be put down in one fell swoop. The next morning, as the two armies met in total confusion, Jim remembered seeing picnickers, with baskets and colorful blankets dotting the hills, watching the battle.

By then he didn't care. Billy was dead, and Jim was out for revenge. Had it not been for the fact that his reckless actions also saved the life of a General's son, he would have been court martialed for his behavior instead of receiving commendations.

It took Jim ten minutes before he had pulled himself back to full reality. What he thought was reality. The dream had been so real. He could feel the course rawhide of the rounder's ball, smell the fresh dirt, the tang of blood, then the fight...the adrenaline, the high, and the absolute assurance that he would win.

And losing Billy. Like losing his father. Jim decided he needed a drink.

After he wiped off some of the lingering sweat he pulled on a shirt and went in search of something, anything, that would burn hotter than the long-buried pain in his soul. He avoided the dinner table, the smell of the food turning his stomach. When he'd found his way into the kitchen, Siobhan watched him with quiet contemplation as he searched the room, then finally stood and disappeared into the food storage. When she returned it was a with a bottle of scotch. She set it down on the table, then returned to her humble meal. Jim nodded his thanks, not trusting his voice, and disappeared back to the room.

He didn't hear his partner behind him until he tried to shut the door of their room, and Arte's foot got in the way.

"Sorry about that, Artemus."

Gordon eyed the bottle, then the pale haunted look on Jim's face, and quietly shut the door pulling a chair over to where he could sit facing Jim, who had taken a seat on the rumpled blankets of his bed.

Jim opened the bottle deftly and took a drink, then silently handed the bottle to his partner. Arte swallowed the liquor, wincing only slightly. It wasn't a bad bottle, but wasn't the best either. It wouldn't matter. The way Jim was taking the liquor down they wouldn't be able to taste it for long.

After the second round Arte asked, "What are we drinking to?"

"Death."

"Ah."

A third round went down far too easily, and Arte had passed the bottle back for the fourth when Jim hesitated, the mouth of the bottle inches from his lips. "I've been having dreams, Arte." Jim drank, holding the liquor in his mouth this time, letting it burn a bit longer before he swallowed, fighting meeting his partner's gaze.

"Yeah? What about?"

Jim passed the bottle and leaned forward til his elbows met his thighs, loosely weaving his fingers together. "People...people that are long gone. My father...a buddy of mine that was killed at Manassas."

Arte drank, watching Jim's hands continue to move until the bottle was in them once again.

"But...but they're not just dreams. It's like I'm reliving it all."

"Only you know you aren't you _then_, you're you _now_..."

Jim gave him a look of confusion, despite an underlying suspicion that he knew exactly what Arte was talking about.

Arte reached his hand out for the bottle and Jim took a hasty slug before handing it over. "I had a dream, back in that cave about my mother. I was seven in every way, height, body, voice. Except that I wasn't. I was experiencing it again with the mind of a grown man."

"Who died in your dream, Arte?"

Arte stared at the label on the bottle, took a drink, then admitted, "I almost did."

"I've never had dreams like this."

Arte shook his head in agreement.

"I haven't dreamed or even thought about these...people...in ages." Jim insisted, his volume elevating a bit.

"I've been dreaming about the cave too."

Jim took back the bottle, drank and choked on the liquid as he asked, "The cave?"

"As if we're still there...and here, all at the same time."

Jim remembered the echo of a voice, the split second surety that he was in the cave, that dissolved into what he assumed was reality. He took a second drink, thinking, reliving.

Both their heads flickered toward the door at the sound of a knock.

"Sheriff..." Arte greeted, starting to feel the hastily swallowed liquor numb his tongue and lips. "Care to join us?"

Bowdeen eyed the two men, the lack of glasses, then stepped into the room and put his hand out for the bottle, sniffing at its neck. He reacted to the quality of the booze the same way Arte had before taking a swig and handing the bottle back.

"Your engineer is anxious to get back to the loco, was wantin' to take the Mallet up the mountain tomorrow with some water and fuel. Probably take every minute of daylight to get that engine movin', if it'll move at all."

"Will the weather hold?" Arte asked, feeling the pleasant warmth envelope his body in a way that it hadn't in a very long time. As if he had truly been without a drink in over a month.

"Signal corps outta Los Pinos says we should have a run of dry, cold weather for a couple'a days yet." Bowdeen said, then glanced to West. "Got vittles left if yer wantin' any."

Jim shook his head, put up a hand, then saluted with the bottle and took another drink.

"We'll be headin' out before day break, breakfast around five or so." Bowdeen nodded to himself, seeming to be done imparting information, yet he remained in the room, eventually tugging at the neck of the bottle. He examined the label, took a lingering drink, then sighed. "We...we never expected you fellas to turn up again...you jest...disappeared from the face of the earth."

Arte knew that the man was fishing for answers, but they were answers that couldn't possibly be given. Primarily because they made no sense.

"Well.." Bowdeen finally responded to himself, once more accepting that his curiosity wasn't going to be satisfied any time soon. "S'pose if we keep an eye out, them prisoners'll show up on their own too?"


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning, around five thirty, West, Gordon, Orrin and John, along with Bill Bowdeen and Wyatt Sumner climbed aboard a freight car filled with wood, pulled by a Mallet engine that also carried the weight of two tank cars of water. With the Mallet under the hand of a local engineer they headed back up the mountain.

By midmorning they had easily reached the abandoned engine, hopper and equine car. While Orrin and John hastily began a thorough inspection of the damage that time, severe temperature changes, and the derailing had done, Arte and Jim stood either side of the tracks searching the top of the ravine, eyeing the ground for tracks and waiting. Bowdeen watched the secret servicemen, getting the distinct impression that they were on guard. But while there were wolves, bears, and other predators in the mountains, none were likely to be out and about in the snow, let alone willing to attack so many men in broad daylight.

The Sheriff was willing to chalk it up to a strange sort of paranoia and soon turned his attention toward the work at hand. Once the boiler was declared sound, a line was run from the tank cars to the engine and a hand crank put into use to transfer the water. As the crank required two men at all times, they set up shifts. Those men that weren't operating the pump were moving the wood to the hopper car using two small sleds.

They paused in their work for a cold meal well after noon had come and gone, working against the short period of daylight in the mountains. Even before the boiler was full Orrin was building a raging fire in the firebox, helped along with several logs soaked in lard.

By full dark the back-breaking work had ended and West, Gordon, Bowdeen and Sumner were aboard the equine car of The Wanderer, basking in the warmth provided by the steam pipes and looking over the damage that the prisoners had done to the cells.

"A little?" Jim asked, looking at Bowdeen then back to the twisted remains of a cell door, likely the handiwork of the strong man in the group. "You call this "a little damage"?"

"At least they didn't use the dynamite, Jim." Arte said quietly, trying to lessen the blow.

"No because the dynamite might have blown up the locks and hinges, instead of just warping them into uselessness."

Five days, or five weeks, ago, depending on who you asked, Jim had been rushing to get the cells finished and get back to Halloway, intending for the work he had done to last at least six months, if not a year. West gazed at what amounted to nothing more than a gigantic waste of time, then walked away, disgusted. Arte followed his partner, the two leaning against the side of one of the horse stalls that occupied the center of the car.

"They can be fixed..." Arte said. "Once we get the car back to Saguache, we can-"

"I'm not worried about the cells, Arte." Jim responded quietly, then glanced briefly over his shoulder and said, "Those bars couldn't have been forced open like that by any human, even Larry the Large."

Artemus looked between Jim's face and the twisted mess of metal, "You think our friend the beast did this?"

Jim took a breath. "Maybe...or her offspring."

"In league with them?" Arte asked, his voice jumping up an octave.

"She was very specific about why she grabbed us, and who she thought had 'taken' her child."

"You're talking as if this is some teenager with a bad boy complex getting his jollies before succumbing to a life of chaste adulthood. We aren't talking about a gang of cowboys on a rampage, we're talking about a creature from who knows where, that looks like who knows what, and who knows why."

"Arte..."

"Further, we have no tracks to follow. We have no idea where these men would have gone, why they would have taken this creature with them."

"Arte."

"Or how.."

"Arte!"

At that moment the other two men in the car were staring silently at West and Gordon, their conversation dying in favor of the curious nonsense that the older partner was spouting. When Arte finally fell silent and looked to the younger man he followed the pointed finger to the pile of fur and leathery skin dumped in a corner of the stall they'd been leaning against.

"It's the suit..." Arte said, going around the wall and entering the rectangular space, picking up the heavy article. Yet even as he held it he realized it wasn't the suit the criminals had used to act out their deception in the mountains surrounding the mining town.

This was bigger, heavier and...fresh.

"The markings, the thickness of the fur, it's all the same James. Exactly the same just...bigger."

"They didn't kill it and skin it, did they?" Jim asked.

"Kill and skin?" Bowdeen finally butted in, moving to where he could see what Gordon held in his hand, and registering distaste.

"There'd be blood, and the car would smell like rotting meat. This looks like it's been tanned. And why would they leave it behind."

"What the hell is that?" Bowdeen demanded, pointing at the skins that had two legs, two arms, even a face, like that of an ape.

"You don't suppose it...it skinned itself?" Gordon asked, ignoring the lawman as he dragged the skins into the whole of the car. Without encouragement his partner bent helping him spread the skin out until they had a grotesque, man shaped fur rug on the floor. Almost seven feet in length.

"Shed, Arte. Shedding a skin, like a snake." And nearly full grown, Jim thought, remembering the mantle of snow sitting on an invisible set of shoulders high above the ground.

Suddenly Arte's eyes were alight, and he snapped his fingers. "You know that suit always did baffle me. It was seamless, but I always assumed it was made from the hides of various animals because...well because nothing else like it existed. But suppose...suppose they found a skin, like this only smaller, somewhere in the woods and it was that discovery that hatched Peach's plan in the first place."

"And suppose Junior is still romping around in this same part of the woods after shedding his skin and notices what looks like another of his kind running around scaring miners. 'We are few, but many?'"

"Junior doesn't have a friend outside of Mom, so of course someone who looks like a twin would be an instant attraction. The offspring could think that Peach and his cohorts are friends."

"Eventually, with or without the suit." Jim added, scrubbing a hand over blessedly shaved cheeks before he said, "That's a fine theory, Arte but that doesn't help us track down Junior."

"What in hell is _that thing_?!"

Surprised Arte and Jim looked up to find Wyatt pointing a trembling finger at the skin on the floor, apparently only just then noticing the topic of conversation. In typical Bowdeen fashion, the Sheriff had resigned himself to waiting for an explanation and stood, leaned back against the side wall of the car, his hat pulled down over his eyes.

At Wyatt's outburst he gave the young man a look, then pursed his lips at West and Gordon, putting his hand out as if to say, 'Now you _have _to explain it, whether you like it or not."

They were, literally, saved by the bell. Orrin started clanging the copper bell that rested atop the boiler, breaking up the silence and signaling to anyone in the rail road pass that they were preparing to leave.

The Mallet answered the bell with a whistle of its own, and The Wanderer started to move. Backwards.

Arte blinked and looked at his partner. "Aren't we going the wrong way?"

"Orrin and I agreed we should try to get the varnish car while we're up here. Especially if the area around it is going to be susceptible to another avalanche."

"Orrin and...you...agreed."

"Well yeah, Arte, you were busy with the other men loading the wood. I figured you'd appreciate getting the car back and-"

"This little partnership you've got going with Orrin. Deciding to put in new containment cells, and planning all sorts of renovations...it's all well and good James, but don't you think it might be nice to include me in on a few things...every once in a while."

"Sure, Arte..."

"I'm not just here to cook and make smoke bombs, you know."

"I never said you were, Arte, I just-"

"If I could interrupt this little...spat." Bowdeen muttered before he pointed to the skin on the floor. "Have you boys jest forgotten to do yer laundry, or is this somethin' we should be concerned about showin' up naked in the town of Saguache?"

"Maybe we should all..." Jim stalled and looked to his partner, reluctant to start the long improbable story but knowing at this point they didn't have a choice.

"Sit...we should all sit." Arte said, nodding, before each man carefully found a place to sit on the floor.

By the time they reached the abandoned varnish car the two secret service agents had managed to answer most of the questions that Bowdeen and his deputy had. Some of the answers resulted in, "I don't know." But they did their best to convince Bowdeen that that was better than nothing.

"So how do you know when this...uh, Junior? Reaches full maturity?" Sumner asked, still leaned forward with keen interest, as he had been for most of the conversation.

"We don't really know.." Arte said with a feeling of de ja vu.

"So it might be visible, or it might not be visible. Is it female or male?"

"We don't-"

"The fur and the thickness of the skin would indicate that this is a mammal, yet it sheds its skin like a snake, do you-"

"Wyatt, you better start askin' easy questions cause if I have to hear "We don't know" one more time, I'm going to strangle someone and it won't be these two fellas..."

Sumner sat back finally and quietly said, "Never mind." Addressing the comment solely toward Arte who had been giving most of the answers. Before anything more could be said Orrin stepped into the car, pausing wide-eyed as he took in the damage to the cells, the giant skin on the floor and the powwow gathered around it.

"Is that-"

"It could be." Jim answered hastily standing, forestalling anymore questions with a pointed look. Orrin nodded after a moment and rubbed his hands together, warding off the chill that had hit him after he left the blast furnace that was the engine cab. "Varnish car is still boxed in by a lot of snow but it's melted enough, we can probably just pull her free. It's too dark out there to hook up without a couple of spotters."

Together the men rose and headed out taking with them lighted lanterns made precisely for rail work at night. On one side of each lantern was a green shield made of thick glass, and on the opposing side a red shield.

The varnish car had been shifted off the rails just enough to require the use of a frog. Orrin set the heavy metal piece in place along side the track then went back to the engine. As Orrin backed the train toward the varnish car, the wheels easily crushing the last few inches of snow over the rails, Jim and Arte watched from one side of the track, and Bowdeen and Sumner from the other side, guiding Orrin with lantern signals until the train was close enough to the varnish car to attach the safety chain.

Once attached the chain was used to pull the car back onto the track, before Orrin was able to engage the coupler. As the giant metal mechanism locked, Arte felt a sigh go through him that he hadn't expected, and shined his light over the length of the car. Despite how irked he felt at Jim making the decision without consulting him, his partner had been right. It felt good to have the varnish car, essentially their home, back, safely connected to the train.

A second later the feeling was gone, replaced by a note of panic. Arte clutched at Jim's sleeve and dug his fingers in without realizing.

"Arte!?" Jim winced, yanking his arm free, a second later concerned that his partner was having an attack. When Arte didn't answer with words, but instead pointed silently at the roof the varnish car, Jim followed the finger, lifting his lantern until the light reflected off a pair of eyes, the way it would a mountain cat.

Only what crouched above them in no way resembled a cat. No, there was no doubt in Jim's mind that he was looking into the curious face of Junior.

A second later he and Arte blacked out. Jim faintly felt his body impacting the ground before the world disappeared and he was thrust into total darkness.

Before the darkness lifted he could smell the fire, the dank wetness of the cave. He could feel the distant throb of pain in his ankle and could hear the roaring of the snow through the hole in the ceiling. He forced his eyes open, squinting against the light, trying to sit up but fighting the fatigue of days spent laying in the same position. He was desperate to move, to do something that would allow him to recapture control.

When he was finally able to rise he scanned the room. Counted bodies. They had multiplied. Two of the prisoners were there in the cave now, unconscious, laid out flat on their backs. Painfully Jim crawled to where Arte lay, shaking the man until he woke with an irritated hiss.

The minute their surroundings registered, Arte developed the same haunted look on his face that Jim had. When Arte felt his cheeks and found that he still had the bedamned beard that he had been trying so hard to be rid of, he groaned.

"Arte?"

"It's never gonna end, James." Arte whined, his hands exploring along his rib cage next. Pain, spongy bruises, shifting bones. He was exhausted, his mind worn out completely as if he'd been doing six digit long division in his head for hours.

"It's gonna end." Jim said, trying to sound reassuring. "She brought us back for a reason."

Suddenly angry, Arte grit his teeth. "To torture us. To reel us in and throw us back out like bait fish. This is some sort of sick game, James, I'm finished playing it."

"THIS IS NOT A GAME!" The voice spoke, once more loud, barreling past the defenses in their minds like they were butter. "YOU WILL FIND OFFSPRING. YOU WILL RETURN WHAT WAS TAKEN."

"If you'd left us there we might have managed it!" Arte shouted, outraged and just as quickly exhausted, his ribs playing hell with his breathing ability.

"Arte, calm down."

"I COULD NOT LEAVE YOU THERE."

"Why?! Because you weren't satisfied with making us look like lunatics, or with robbing us of five weeks of our lives? It wasn't bad enough that you did your utmost to kill me..."

"Arte, listen to me. You need to slow down and breathe."

"Slow down!?" Arte's voice reached its highest pitch then broke, the volume bleeding out like air from a punctured hot air balloon. The look of bewildered betrayal that Gordon gave him made West want to slap the man. But he was more concerned about the fit Arte was working himself into, and clamped his hand all the tighter around Arte's arm.

"We never left."

"We ne- what?"

"We _never...left...the cave._"

Arte was breathing hard but it was slowing, understanding was starting to register as his eyes danced back and forth. "Never left the..."

Jim shook his head slowly then got down low enough to help Arte sit up, easing his breathing a little more. "Look over there, Arte."

One wall of the cave was finally visible, no longer shrouded in the fog like darkness. Instead they could see a scene playing over the grain of the stone. Like the images created by the zoopraxiscopes and kinetoscope, only longer, sharper, with sound, and of all things color. Like a play, but on a flat surface. And the perspective seemed to be human. As the picture bounced around they could see their own bodies, lying insensate on the ground. Then the source of the picture, the 'see-er' looked up and they could see the concerned faces of Sheriff Bowdeen, Wyatt Sumner and Orrin.

"John.." Arte breathed. "That's coming from John."

"And that one from Orrin." Jim said, pointing to another a moving picture.

Jim noticed a third, then a fourth picture and both men realized in the same moment that they were looking at the world through the eyes of the criminals lying unconscious on the floor. These pictures were both showing a beast, the same beast, hunched in the corner of an open pit. Every few moments one of the pictures would jump, and the see-er would grin cruelly at his partner, before they went back to the torment that so amused them.

"There can't be...two offspring..."

"No, Arte I think this is the past. I think these are memories."

Arte pointed back at the moving pictures showing Orrin, John and the others carrying their bodies into the varnish car. "That is no memory, Jim."

"YOU HAVE POWERFUL MINDS." The voice said, softer than before. "THIS IS ONE FUTURE. A HAPPY FUTURE."

"But not real." Arte called into the darkness.

The voice finally responded, dejected, distracted. "NO."

"Then why put us through that, Jim? Why...keep _them_ in it?" Arte asked, gesturing toward Orrin and John's unconscious forms.

"TO SEE YOUR NATURE. TO LEARN."

Arte was caught between understanding and the bile of outrage still churning deep in his chest. His partner was focused on the images, the moving pictures projected from the minds of the two criminals.

"Arte, if she keeps going through their memories she may find her offspring on her own."

Artemus winced, moving on the harsh cave floor until he could no longer see the pictures, laying down on his uninjured side. "Good." He said, bitterly. "Wake me when it's over."

Jim frowned, but let his partner be, watching the images, and coming to the conclusion that they were from over a month and half ago. "Can you..." He called into the darkness, not certain how to phrase the question he was wanting to ask. "Can you make the memories go faster? Or skip ahead?"

"NO."

"Why?"

"IT WOULD CAUSE HARM."

Arte grunted in response but said nothing, and Jim sat for what seemed like hours, spell-bound by the images until they suddenly flickered away, and darkness flooded the wall.

"THEIR MINDS MUST REST." The beast explained without prompting.

"What about Orrin and John?" Jim asked. "You saw that we knew nothing of your offspring before, John and Orrin are the same."

"THAT MAY BE."

"Will you allow them rest?"

"THEY ARE RESTING." The voice assured him and Jim realized that he hadn't even noticed the other moving pictures fading. It might have happened hours ago.

Jim thought for a moment, then said. "What about you? When do you rest?"

"WHEN MY OFFSPRING RETURNS." The voice said.

"This is your choice?"

Another pause then, "YES."

Jim looked to his leg, wincing at the pain that was once again radiating through it. As if the healing had never happened. Precisely as if their minds had been projected into an imagined future, and all the things that they expected, that they needed, to be convinced that they were in Saguache five weeks into the future, had been provided.

Jim massaged the abused muscles above the heavy splint, "You have many abilities that are alien to us."

"YES."

"Why not simply heal us and let us go?"

"YOU COULD NOT BE TRUSTED.

"But you trust us now?"

The voice hesitated. "YES."

"Then why not-"

"YOU WILL RECOVER."

It was true, Jim thought, the break would heal on its own. But he distinctly remembered wounding the beast. Remembered seeing blood drop through the swirling snow then stop on its own. The beast had the ability to heal itself, and clearly, to have some affect on the healing of others.

"Why did you revive me?" Arte called.

Jim jumped a little at the sound of his partner's voice. It seemed that his sudden participation in the conversation had surprised the beast as well. She was silent longer than the norm.

"THAT DAMAGE WAS UNINTENDED."

Arte sat up again, slowly, speaking angrily as he did. "Surely it must have occurred to you that tossing a man off a cliff might kill him."

"DEATH WAS UNKNOWN TO I."

"That isn't possible. All living things die. What goes up, must come down. An object in motion stays in motion. These are facts-"

Jim tried to interrupt as Arte's voice started to rise in pitch but Arte put up a hand and repeated, "Facts, Jim."

"IN THIS REALM. YES."

The calm feminine voice cut off Arte's next argument. "This...realm?"

"You're in another realm? Another reality?"

"NO."

"But you came from another reality? Another dimension?" Arte asked.

"YES. TO FIND OFFSPRING."

"You're offspring came here first?" Jim asked, narrowing his eyes as Arte took in a deep breath.

"YES. MANY OF YOUR...MONTHS AGO."

"But why-" Jim's question was cut off by a sudden wave of pressure in his head that nearly blacked him out. He swayed, falling back against the cave floor.

"YOU WILL REST."

Out of the corner of his eye Jim could see Arte laying down too. Whatever the beast had done had wiped most of the questions out of Jim's mind, instead suggesting that all he wanted was sleep.

He fought it for only a short while before his body demanded the same, and he closed his eyes.


End file.
